Traversing Vietnam

I have this daydream that I defer to, when my teeth are chattering with fear on one of those awful transpacific flights that we so often subject ourselves to. I pretend that the airplane is driving on the ground instead, and that I have a whole room with a flat bed to lounge on. There’s s big window and lots of interesting things to look at as I fly along the ground. It can still be a long trip, that’s ok, even overnight, but it’s soothing, even cozy.

Well, my friends, it turns out: this is a train!

We took the overnight train from Ho Chi Minh City (in the south of Vietnam, of course), all the way up to Danang, which is almost in the middle. It was a 16 hour ride. Sure, we had to squish a few cockroaches on our bunks, but they were only small ones. We had gotten stuck in the crappy carriage, but the bonus was that it was filled with locals, not tourists. Luke and I paid extra for the bottom bunks, and we had a couple of friendly Vietnamese strangers snoring on the bunks above us. We even got to keep our luggage under our beds! We missed the dinner food cart accidentally, but we binged on rice-based snacks and popcorn when it came by again at 6am. Luke also had a warm can of beer for breakfast, because his bunkmate gave it to him. So thoughtful.

Luke went to sleep early, because the train really was soothing and cozy. But I was just too darn excited to sleep. I was rewarded for this at midnight, when blindingly bright, twinkling fields of light suddenly started streaming past my window. It was a mesmerising sight. For minutes, I couldn’t figure out what it was. Finally, we passed a field of lights only metres away from the train tracks, and I saw that they were lightbulbs hung on cords between rows of dragonfruit plants, lighting up the weird spindly arms of the plants. They are really twisted looking plants to begin with, but throw in acres of Christmas lights on crack, and the accompanying geometric shadows, and you get quite a sight. Insider travel tip: a magical train trip is even more magical if you hang out in the bathroom and watch the night scenes pass through the open window. The smell of the pee that is understandably coating the room is more than masked by the fragrant night air.

I don’t know how people traveled before Google and mobile data. Anyway, I immediately googled this weirdness and found out the dragonfruit plants usually only fruit once per year. But, if you put light on them for a few hours each night for the few winter months, you can confuse those poor plants into flowering in the off season. More dragonfruit for all.

Various propagandas and real history
As you know, we like to learn about the history of the places we visit. Southeast Asia has been a pretty uncomfortable place to do this, and Vietnam is no exception.

If you go to Ho Chi Minh City, it’s probably important to go to the War Remnants Museum. Opened just a few months after the fall (or liberation, choose your own propaganda) of Saigon, it used to be called the Exhibition House for US and Puppet Crime. So that probably gives a good indication of the slant. But the photos don’t lie, and there are lots of them. It is really, really horrible. We couldn’t look at all of the photos, which I regret, because I think it’s important to witness and remember what happened to these people. And by people, I’m including not just civilians, but soldiers from all sides, and media folks. But we were on a direct path to nervous breakdown central. We’re sensitive souls.

In fact, we were probably saved from a freak out by running into Annie, right inside the museum. Annie is a French friend we met in Laos, whom we’ve accidentally run into four times in Southeast Asia now. We often see the same backpackers a couple times, but fate is clearly advocating for a friendship here.

All in all, we like Ho Chi Minh City. We took a walking tour of the leafy central part of the city, which was the scene of a lot of iconic moments from the fall/liberation of Saigon. Perhaps this is because it’s also where most members of the press corps lived. There’s an exhibition on them in the War Remnants Museum, which gives them almost tender treatment. Given the slant of this museum, this makes sense. Being the youngin’ that I am, I never had thought about how influential those press people were in the outcome of this first televised war. And how they often paid with their lives for this information to reach the world.

PS, the traffic in Ho Chi Minh City is unreal. As one fellow tourist shouted at me as I dilly dallied at the edge of a packed road: you just have to commit. You don’t wait for the cars and bikes to stop coming- you just walk into them, and they part like a river flowing around a rock. Hopefully.

Shingle to boggie: big fat babies 

We don’t really like backpacking. Go ahead, judge us and call us snobs for not fully appreciating our two months of extra holiday post-vehicle. But truly, it’s exhausting. Sleeping in a different bed each night isn’t too bad, but not being able to cater for ourselves is a bummer – unhealthy and expensive. It sucks to carry our stuff on our backs, though we do enjoy having so little stuff. We miss the familiarity of our car, coming back to our home every time we go for a drive.

The worst is transport. I thought the epic bus rides would be my main complaint, but they aren’t too bad now that we know how to get good companies. Our central problem is that it is almost impossible to get off the beaten track unless one pays buttloads of cash for a private driver, spends days and days taking local public transport, or rents a scooter. None of these are viable options for us to do regularly. (Money, time, safety, respectively.)

So, we are pretty much destined to the city-to-city tourist path, with a couple package tours here and there and a private car for a few hours now and again. We miss just rolling into an unsuspecting village, or pulling over in a nice quiet roadside spot. We miss making our plans by what sounds amazing, not by what we can reasonably access. So that’s our first world problem of the day.

A Tale of Two Medium Sized Townships in the Mekong Delta

One of the times we took a private car was to see Go Cong, a small town on the Mekong Delta. It’s nothing out of this world, but it was fantastic to walk around a pleasant, pretty town with zero tourist infrastructure. People were insanely friendly. We confused the tour companies with our request to go there, and they insisted there were no busses going that way. There are, of course, just not ones that ever take Westerners.

We then moved on to My Tho, a Mekong town with a definitive tourist infrastructure. We took a boat ride (private, but only due to lack of other customers). We were taken to three islands, each with stands of souvenirs and a different product for tourist consumption (honey, coconut candy, tropical fruit). It was indeed beautiful, and I binged on them products, but still.

The new Vietnam 

Much like my experience with China, Luke barely recognises Vietnam, and he was only here 10 years ago. It’s way more developed. There are way more cars, firstly, and less bicycles. Everything is newer. There’s a heap more English being spoken – he reckons because the kids who were being taught English in school when he was here last are now old enough to be working in cafes and hotels.

We talked to an Aussie cafe owner here in Hue (just north of the DMZ) who said that when he first went to Hoi An in 1998, it was mostly houses. A few cafés dotted here and there, a few shops. Now, as we can attest, there are about 100 tailors, we estimate. Every building on the main streets is either a restaurant, guesthouse, or shop, or has been preserved and converted into a fee-for-view attraction. It’s beautiful still, and charming, but it’s different.

I’m happy for the locals, I think. They seem to appreciate the change. The dollars that flow into that town, and many others like it, provide disposable income, education, and opportunities. As our tour guide in Hoi An said to us: everyone used to live on their boats with their whole families, fishing for a living. Now, pretty much everyone lives in a nice brick house on land, and almost everyone goes to university in Danang, Ho Chi Minh City, or Hanoi. In her case, her parents are rice farmers. Now, she’s a tour guide, one of her brothers is an engineer, and her other brother is the primary school teacher on the island they grew up on.

Sappy Life Lessons: Part I

I suppose a rather large piece of news is that we are going home soon. We have flights to Australia on February 2, and we’ll be flying back to the US in mid-April. Folks invariably ask us how we feel about this, which is kind and thoughtful. The answer is: we’re totally cool with it. Getting happier about it by the day, actually.

You see, we have a list. Luke and I are people who are much happier when we have a list, or, better yet, multiple lists and a list of those lists. In this case, these lists detail the ways that we want to spend our time and live our lives when we are back to a more *stationary* lifestyle. We’ve learned the secret of why we love to travel: it pleasurably forces us to plan things we love into each day. Things we love are pretty much the only things we do, actually. But, there’s no reason that we can’t plan things we love into each day at home, too. Sure, there are more mundane responsibilities that come with earning a living rather than spending the fruits of that earning as a full time job. But intentionally building joy into our schedules is the most significant change we want to make after this year.

As Luke says, he loves to sit in a hot tub, but he also likes to get out of one.

I told you half a year ago that Luke had his Moroccan linen and was ready for some self-discovery; so there you have it. We’re waxing philosophical on the regular these days, so just you wait for more jaw-dropping insights in our few remaining posts.

First and foremost: the silly faces of Khai Dinh’s tomb

Look at this little dude.

Cocaine is a helluva drug

He looks good natured but in the kind of way where he’ll still stab you in the shower

Ok, explanation. This tomb was constructed for one of the last Vietnamese kings, only about 100 years ago. It’s stumper fancy, and has a lot of sculpture and bas-reliefs. I can’t give you a reason for all the funny faces, however.

CLOSE UP!!

Hi!!

Howdy hi!!

Ho Chi Minh City 

First noodle soup in Vietnam! This was a little streetsude place filled with workers on their lunch break.

Saigon special

The traffic, looking unusually orderly

Our little alley, in Pham Ngu Lao, the tourist part of the city

Just a cityscape

Now this is not what I expected of Ho Chi Minh City. We went to this part of town to see an American-trained ophthalmologist.

The old Central Post Office

Inside the post office – French influence, non?

Decorations in preparation for Tet

A lovely city view

Wandering in an (overpriced) street market

Cool modern building

More Tet decorations

The Hotel Majestic, which was used as Japanese Army barracks at one time

The church

Independence Palace, and a replica of one of the tanks that famously stormed the gates, at the exact point of the fall/liberation of Saigon on April 30, 1975.

And here’s a replica of a fighter jet that was used by two rebelling South Vietnamese used to bomb their own leader’s palace, in 1962. A huge amount of the palace was destroyed, so Diem had the whole thing rebuilt

A radio command desk in the fortified basement

The President’s basement situation room

A map, untouched since the moment of the fall of Saigon, showing the DMZ area

The beautiful living quarters in the palace – it looks like a Roman house because it is structured as such, around a central courtyard with bedrooms on the side and a lounging dining room at the back

Lovely 60s architecture

A soldier looks over the gates that were stormed on April 0.

The gates, now open for tour busses.

The President’s helicopter (or a replica)

At the War Remants Museum

Go Cong 

Posing in front of a seemingly important building

Freaking sunshine. I couldn’t wear sunglasses because I had to wear my glasses, so all of our selfies look like this.

Getting the most unreal Banh Mi (mystery meat sandwich) made

A nice residential street

We stopped for drinks 3 times in two hours. It was hot.

The was a complex with what looked like 3 or 4 big boarding school buildings. Here’s the newest addition being built.

A lovely old colonial building

A lovely old colonial church

Go Cong’s main stretch

My Tho

A view from our hotel to the Mekong

The newly constructed riverside promenade

Taking our boat trip

Our first tourist stop: bees!

He actually seemed really disappointed that we didn’t want to hold it. He seemed like he thought we were dumb white people who were afraid of a silly 8 foot Python for no reason whatsoever.

Luke tries on a hat.

Luke tries on a durian

This guy looks really calm, but actually, it was a really disturbing moment, seeing him. He was in this tiny tank, just sitting still. When I got close to the tank for a photo, he backed up, open his mouth, and ran into the tank full force, his body writhing. He did this continually, backing up and slamming, wide-mouthed, into the the glass, as I walked away. Water was sloshing out of the tank. I’ve never seen a fish with emotion before, especially not suicidal/homicidal rage.

Ladies making and wrapping coconut candy by hand

Coconuts being squished to get their juice out

A crocodile farm

A sceptical chicken

Planting a new tourist garden

A tourist trap, but a pretty one.

The tide went down while we were onshore, and our boat got stuck. This other tourist boat saved us.

Hoi An (plus the train ride)

Making our way to our carriage

Our bunks

Hoi An at night

Hoi An at day

Here come the tourists

A graveyard in someone’s back yard

The new Hoi An

A temple

More temple

Inside the temple

The top of the inside of the temple.

I’ve been travelling too long to pay attention to the name of the temple. But it is pretty.

I guess this is what all of Hoi An looked like, 20 years ago.

We went on a bicycle tour of the islands around Hoi An. Here, our guide explains to us the process of a really talented craftsmen, who inlays mother of pearly into wood

We also visited boat builders

Luke takes a break to chat with a friendly fellow tour participant

I think this is the prettiest faded paint. If it were on a canvas, I would purchase it.

These ladies gave us a wave as we passed, and shouted a small conversation with our guide.

And this lady showed us how to row a bamboo boat. She was a performer, and hilarious – before we were introduced to her, she was creeping silently around the group, tickling the backs of people’s necks with a reed.

She only let me steer for about 5 seconds. We went wildly off course during that time, and she has to work against the current to get us back.

These pigs work in a rice wine brewery and they are literally drunk. They only get fed theatrically fermented rice waste – it’s 3% alcohol. But at least they look like happy drunks.

Still on our bike ride – a fellow works the rice fields

Back to the pigs. Guess why they live in the rice wine brewery? Here it is: they poop, their poop is hosed into a closed tank under their pen, the poop produces methane, the methane produces the fire to boil the rice wine, freaking genius, right? Here’s the methane burner, straight from the poop tank.

On the bike ride

A craftscouple weaving dyed bamboo mats

Finishing our bike tour with a boat ride back to Hoi An

A fishing net

Hue

The Citadel in Hue. This was the imperials capital of Vietnam from 1804 to the mid 1900s.

Walking along the moat of the Citadel

Entering the citadel

A huge amount of the citadel was destroyed during the Tet Offensive, but a lot has been rebuilt

One of the buildings in the Citadel

The Citadel has a Forbidden City inside, which was for Royal business and pleasure.

The gardens within the Forbidden City

Lounging in a well placed cafe in the gardens

Fabulous tiles

The gardens

Luke descending from a viewpoint

Outside of the Forbidden City, walking around the modern city that now lives within the walls of the citadel

Lovely Thien Mu Pagoda, a Buddhist temple outside of Hue

A monk takes a break from his work on the pagoda

Details of Thien Mu Pagoda

Detail of Thien Mu Pagoda

The car in which Thich Quang Duc, a monk, was driven to his self-immolation in Saigon in 1963 (pictured above the car). He was protesting the anti-Buddhist Diem regime,

Wandering around Thien Mu Pagoda

Another area of Thien Mu

The view from Thien Mu

Flowers being transported in preparation for Tet

Moving on- this is the lovely and peaceful Tu Hieu Pagoda, another Buddhist monestary

We’re obsessed with this radical 80s plant. Botanists, please tell us the name of it!

Tu Hieu

Tu Hieu

Tu Hieu. We sat and listened to the monks chant for twenty minutes. At one point, one monk got his friend to hit his drum for him for a few seconds while he went and plugged in a fan and pointed it at them. Then he went back to drumming and chanting.

Tu Hieu

The legendary doglioncat

Incense sticks, probably displayed for tourists to be effortlessly artsy,

The tomb of Tu Duc, who was Emperor of Vietnam 1848-1883

Tu Duc’s tomb

Tu Duc’s tomb

Tu Duc’s tomb. This is his life story, which he wrote himself.

Tu Duc’s tomb

Tu Duc’s tomb

Tu Duc’s tomb, which, by the way, he used to hang out at all the time when he was alive. He boated on the lake and wrote poetry with his concubines and what not. Morbid.

And finally, the tomb of Khai Dinh, who was Emperor 1916-1925. It’s the one that’s got all the funny faces.

Unbelievable detail in Khai Dinh’s tomb

Leaving the tomb of Khai Dinh