I Have Wings

Out With A Bang ... Literally!

For our last full day in Vietnam, Eric and I went on a tour to the Caodai Holy See in Tay Ninh and the Cu Chi Tunnels. Tay Ninh was about 2 hours outside of Saigon and although we forced onto another bus, the ride wasn't that bad and it turned out to be a fun way to end the trip.

Although clearly in the "temple" category, I was pretty intrigued with checking out the Caodai Holy See. Caodai was a religion founded in Vietnam in 1926. The founder, Ngo Minh Chieu, was widely read in both Eastern and Western religious works and incorporated elements of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Christianity, Islam and native Vietnamese spiritualism in developing the Caodai philosophy. I won't go into too many details, but its actually pretty interesting - leveraging a strong base of Buddhism, peppered with seances with the dead and priests who are celibate AND vegetarian to boot! They believe in Moses, Jesus and Mohammed (as well as Buddha), but believe their messages were corrupted because the messengers were human. To avoid this "human" problem, Caodaism gets all of its mesages directly from the spirit world during seances. Interestingly, Caodai priests contact spirits of many famous Eastern and Western people, including Joan of Arc, Rene Descartes, William Shakespeare, Louis Pasteur and Vladimir Lenin. Pretty exclusive club, but I couldn't stop thinking about that horrible movie, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, that came out a couple years ago.

The temple itself was a bit less interesting than the details of the religion, but there was some strange imagery (lots of eyes inside of pyramids like on the dollar bill) and we watched one of the daily services which involved much chanting and bowing.

After the temple, we headed over to the Cu Chi Tunnels. The tunnels were used by the Viet Cong to control a large rural area that was only about 30 km from Saigon. The tunnel networks were extremely intricate and included living areas, storage facilities, weapons factories, kitchens, hospitals, command centers, etc. All told there were more than 250 km of tunnels. On the tour I learned that the ground was actually perfect for constructing the tunnels because it was 95% clay - no stones or wood of any sort was used, the tunnels were dug directly into the ground. The tunnels were so well hidden that they even existed within the perimeter of the US military base at Dong Du. By all accounts, the Cu Chi Tunnels greatly frustrated the American forces and they were never able to overtake them, despite tremendous amounts of bombing and gassing.

The picture above is one of the actual tunnels. It was incredibly small - I couldn't fit in unless I raised my hands over my head. According to our guide, Americans were fat even back then and couldn't really maneuver inside of the tunnels. Later in our tour we actually went into a series of tunnels that had been created for tourists - they were larger than the real tunnels, but it was still incredibly tight (I could stand, but only hunched over so my hands were on the ground, sort of like how an ape waddles around).

The tour also included examples of the various types of home-made boobie traps the Viet Cong used to trap the Americans. I can't even imagine what it must have been like running through that jungle during the War. Despite their success in maintaining the tunnels and frustrating the Americans, the costs to the Viet Cong and the villagers who fought and lived in the tunnels was extremely high. According to our guide, only 6,000 of the approximately 16,000 Viet Cong troops survived.

On the way out we stopped by a firing range and for $5, I was given 5 bullets to shoot from an AK-47. Although it wasn't the first time I had fired a gun - we had riflery at my summer camp growing up - it was definitely my first (and hopefully last) time firing with live ammunition. And its safe to assume that my summer camp didn't have any AK-47s for us to fire.

Although I knew there would be kick back, I definitely wasn't prepared for the force of it. Right into your arm - if I wasn't at a platform, I imagine I would have dropped the gun. Better my should though, all I could think about was Ralphie and shooting my eye out! The sound was deafening - even with the guards, my ears were ringing for several minutes after I was done. Soldiers must all go deaf for days after firing their guns. There were targets out on the range, but I didn't even bother asking if I hit anything. I'm pretty sure I know the answer to that one! All in all, another thing I can check of the "things I didn't realize I'd do in my life, but since I'm in Vietnam what the hell" list...

I left Vietnam this morning and am actually writing this from Bangkok. Tomorrow morning I leave for home. I still have a bunch of pictures to post, so I'll be adding some stuff over the next week of so... and I'm hoping to maybe write a little summary once I get a chance to reflect a bit on everything (I'm thinking 20 hours on the plane might do the trick!)

But for now, "mama, I'm coming home!"

In & Around Saigon...

For the past four days, Eric and I have been in Saigon (a.k.a. Ho Chi Minh City) and its general vicinity. We arrived on Thursday afternoon and after dumping our bags at the hotel, we journeyed out to see some of the sites. Initial impressions of Saigon centered on the heat and smells - both were barely bearable. It was extremely hot and muggy, which I imagine only intensified the smells from the markets. The streets had the stagnant water with god knows what in it type smell (occasionally present in Bangkok, but everywhere here in Saigon). In fact, Saigon is definitely more similar to Bangkok than the other cities we have been to in Vietnam. It is very much a big city and has a more standard "grid"-like street structure vs. the twisty quaint streets in Hanoi. Of course, the touts are ever present and in addition to the motorbikes, cyclos (essentially rickshaws driven my old men) are everywhere.

In fact, almost as soon as we arrived, Eric and I started to make plans to leave (more below). Before we did, we decided to see the requisite sites and started at Reunification Palace. This was essentially the White House of Southern Vietnam during the war - some of you may remember pictures of tanks crashing through the gates when the communists captured Saigon on April 30, 1975. In order to commemorate this occasion, the palace has actually been kept exactly how it was on that day. It's actually kind of cool to walk around and see how the rooms were designed and set up - it looks like everyone jumped out of their chairs and just took off. The 70's design (color choices, furniture, etc.) is actually kind of funny - it kind of looks like what might happen if the set designers on the Brady Bunch were given the keys to the White House.

After the Palace, we headed over to the War Remnants Museum. According to my trusty guide book it used to be known as the "Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes," but for some reason they decided that wasn't very PC and might offend people. Regardless of the name, the museum was very disturbing. The exhibits are very graphic and difficult to view - they show pictures of deformed babies caused by Agent Orange and document many other U.S.-led atrocities and massacres. They also had a remade prison with "tiger cages" and showed all the different ways prisoners were tortured by the South Vietnamese military. As always the claim of "bias" can be made, but regardless the details of the War were horrible to see and regardless of who is responsible it really hit home the tragedy ... for all involved.

After that we were emotionally exhausted and pretty tired of museums, temples, palaces, and everything else. We called it a day and went back to the hotel to plan our escape out of Saigon. There may be charm here somewhere, but it was not rubbing off on us. We decided to head about 3 hours up the coast to a beach called Mui Ne. We left early the next morning and arrived around noontime. While it wasn't the nicest beach I have ever been to, it was definitely what the doctored ordered. We rented a small cabana just off the beach and did absolutely nothing. For the next day and a half we basically vegged out, read and relaxed. It was great!

We returned to Saigon last night and this morning we went to a all you can eat, all you can drink brunch at the Caravelle Hotel. Total cost was $23 per person and they were nice enough to itemize how much we drank so I know that we consumed over $100 of alcohol ... and keep in mind we are in Vietnam! (Although to be fair, prices were pretty high because we were at a nice hotel, so we didn't get completely sloshed.) The food and drinks were great and we had a fun day just hanging out and talking about our adventures (and the impending end of our trip.) I left with that "I've been drinking since 11 AM" heaviness in my head and went to the hotel for a nap.

Tomorrow we are doing a day tour of the Cu Chi Tunnels (the underground tunnel system used by the Viet Cong during the War) and then that's it. Back to Bangkok on Tuesday and the States on Wednesday! As much fun as I've been having, I am definitely looking forward to coming home!

Easy Riding To My Son

"Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Lookin' for adventure
And whatever comes our way
Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space..."

While its true my motorbike was a bit more scooter, than Harley, the ride was still pretty awesome! The bike maxed out at about 60 km/hour (which a quick division by 1.6 will tell you is ~38 miles/hour), but I might as well have been traveling at ludicrous speed when I was bold enough to crack it up that fast. However, my mother can rest assured that we only did that a few times... for the most part we spent our time dodging around traffic and getting to the side of the road when trucks came barrelling through.

The roads in Vietnam are about the size of a standard two way street, but they have 6 lanes of traffic going through: regular bikes on the edge, than motorbikes, than cars and trucks (and repeated on the other side of the road going the opposite direction). Clearly, there is not enough road space for all of these vehicles, so when a car or truck comes through they typically drive down the middle of the road, the motorbikes cruise into the bike lane, and the bikers ... well, they mostly pray I imagine. Every once in awhile cars come from both directions at once and then everybody prays (and there is lots of horn honking!)

The traffic is obviously the worst closest to the cities and on the roadways used by the tourist buses. Luckily the route we took to My Son managed to avoid the buses so for the most part we had open road. My Son was about an hour and a half outside of Hoi An and incredibly, we didn't even get lost. It was a great way to see the countryside - being on the bike is a lot different than seeing things from inside a van or bus. For one, you are traveling a bit slower and you are also in total control so you can stop whenever you want. You also feel more a part of the surroundings, with the wind whipping around you and brushing right past cows on the side of the road, etc. Plus, even on a motorbike you feel kind of bad ass cruising down the road.

My Son itself was okay - another place I probably would have appreciated more if I had seen it prior to Angkor Wat. They are ruins from the ancient Kingdom of Champa and are quite old (4th - 13th century). Some of them were also bombed during the Vietnam War so you can imagine the shape they are in.

After seeing the ruins we still had several hours left so we cruised back through Hoi An for lunch and then continued up to the Marble Mountains. The Marble Mountains are, well, five small mountains made of marble. They overlook China Beach, which was one of the major areas U.S. soldiers went for R&R during the war. (China Beach was also a TV show in the late 80's, which is why the name might ring a bell.) The Mountains were great - once we reached the top we were given flashlights and led to a bunch of caves. We climbed all through the caves and at the bottom of one was a huge carved out temple. The marble was quite slippery and you could hear bats above you... it was all very Indiana Jones!

Tomorrow we leave in the morning for Ho Chi Minh City (a.k.a. Saigon) where I will finish off my trip before heading home a week from today!

Tale of Two Cities

Eric and I have spent the past couple of days in Hue and Hoi An. Both cities are in the central part of Vietnam, but that's about all they share in common.

We left Hanoi on Sunday morning - we had to wake up at 4:30 AM to make our flight to Hue. Needless to say that started us off a little slowly. Our flight was diverted due to weather and when we finally arrived in Hue (about 2 hours after our scheduled arrival time) it was drizzling, a bit cold and dreary. You can probably guess where this is going - I wasn't a big fan of Hue. It was an ugly town, everywhere you looked someone was asking me if I wanted a motorbike ride, and every corner had a Fujifilm shop (like Kodak, this town invested heavily in film processing and has come on hard times since the digital camera revolution.) Our hotel wasn't much better - it was passable, but it had one of those showers without a curtain so when you take a shower the whole bathroom gets soaked. Course you get what you pay for, and in this case we only paid $10 for the night.

On the bright side, the weather cleared up a bit soon after our arrival. It was still a bit overcast, but it stopped raining. We headed over to a small restaurant that the Lonely Planet and some friends in Bangkok recommended. The cafe was called the Stop & Go Cafe and it is run by Mr. Do - he welcomed us warmly and brought over the specialty of the area, banh khoai and nem lui. Banh khoai is a savoury rice pancake filled with, umm... "stuff" - kind of like a crepe ("same same, but different"). Nem lui is grilled pork kebabs that you roll yourself in rice paper with lettuce and cucumber and dip into peanut sauce. Both were good, but like most of the food in Vietnam so far, its all very greasy and often fried.

After lunch Mr. Phuc, one of Mr. Do's partners offered to take us on a motorbike tour of the city and its sites. Our friends in Bangkok had said that the tour was excellent so we agreed. The tour lasted about 5 hours and he took us all over the place. Every time we jumped on the bike to go someplace new, Mr. Phuc would say "Let's go! Rock and ROLL!" - you probably had to be there, but I got a kick out of it! Mr. Phuc was about 50 years old and had lived in Hue his whole life - he told us many stories about life there and especially the war - even secret stories that he wasn't supposed to talk about, always prefaced by "it's all very political." He told us several times about some connection between JFK's assassination and America's entry into the war, but he spoke just quickly enough that I'm not really sure what he was saying. Bottomline: there may be a Vietamese man in Hue, named Mr. Phuc, that knows something about what happened that day in Dallas.

The sites of Hue were pretty interesting - in that they mostly stunk. Nothing was very old, almost everything was post-1800, but it was horribly maintained and most of the temples were falling apart. Especially after Angkor Wat, I was really disappointed. But, riding on the motorbike made up for it - it was a blast and we really got to see the countryside. I have some amazing pictures of endless rice paddies that are the brightest green you've ever seen. All in all it was a fun day, but we quickly booked a bus reservation to leave the next day.

The bus to Hoi An was about 4 hours - it was pretty uncomfortable, the girl next to us threw up, and the driver honked the horn CONSTANTLY. I was trying to figure out if there was some morse code or something where the horn blowing allowed the cars to communicate, but I couldn't come up with anything. It really is incessant - I need to find someone who can explain what is going on before I leave Vietnam.

In any event, we arrived in Hoi An around dusk and instantly are mood was brightened. Hoi An is a small town on a river. It is very quaint and the houses are all wooden and painted a bright yellow with dark brown wood windows. It is one of those places where when you walk around you feel like you are in a different century... except for the fact that most of the houses now have shops and tourist cafes in them. One nice thing is that cars are not allowed in the Old Quarter, so its a bit quieter and its small enough that you can walk most everywhere. The motorbikes are still around, but every once in awhile the street clears, its quiet and you can really appreciate it.

Last night we had a great meal at a restaurant called Cafe des Amis. The owner (and chef) Mr. Kim, made us feel at home and brought out a 5 course meal of his specialties. A Swiss guy we had met in Hue joined us and afterwards we played some pool and had a few beers at a bar that overlooked the river. Today Eric and I walked around the city and explored some of the temples, houses, and assembly halls. From the 2nd to the 10th centuries, Hoi An was the center of Kingdom of Champa and with its location right on the river, it was a bustling seaport. The various traders from all over the world (or at least Asia) built assembly halls so their traders would have a home away from home. Sort of like the Italian Club in Lynn.

Tomorrow, Eric, our new Swiss friend and I are renting motorbikes and traveling to the My Son ruins which are about 30 km away. I honestly am getting a bit "templed out," but I'm very excited about the motorbike ride. I imagine my mom will not be thrilled with this news, but other travellers have told us the route is safe and much better to rent one out here than in the cities. As Mr. Phuc would say, "Rock and ROLL!"

Pirates, Snakes, Oh My!

The past couple of days in Vietnam have been amazing. I've added pictures from Halong Bay and pictures from a very different type of dinner we had last night (details below).

On Thursday morning, Eric and I woke early and joined an overnight tour to Halong Bay. Halong Bay is in the Gulf of Tonkin and was about a 3 hour drive to the east of Hanoi. When we arrived, we boarded a ship that would be our home for the next two days.

The boat was great (I will admit to be a little nervous ahead of time since the whole trip only cost $35). It had three stories and Eric and I shared a room with hard, but pretty comfortable beds and our own bathroom. There was a large area on the top of the boat with sun chairs and a covered area where we ate all of our meals. The boat had its own kitchen too and the meals were pretty good, considering we where we were.

Speaking of our location - it was beautiful. Halong Bay was about 10-15 degrees warmer than Hanoi (so it was probably mid 70s), but it was very misty and overcast. The whole bay had a very ominous look to it - it was very gray and foggy and the islands that fill the bay appeared as shadows in the distance. For some reason I thought of Pirates of the Caribbean and I was waiting for a ship of cursed pirate ghosts to come out from the horizon. I can't even imagine what it would have been like under the bright sun. Despite the weather, it was all very beautiful - there are over 3,000 islands in the Bay and they are very small and tall with sheer cliffs. I'm not sure my pictures will do them justice...

When we returned from Halong Bay on Friday night, we showered up and embarked on a very strange evening. In my parent's guide book I had read about snake restaurants that exist in a town called Le Mat, which is a few miles outside of Hanoi. Needless to say we were a bit intrigued and decided to check it out (along with a couple we had met in Halong Bay). Since we were going to eat snake, I donned by AC/DC t-shirt - it felt like it would be appropriate attire.

Getting there proved to be part of the adventure. The first few cabbies we asked had no clue what we were talking about. Finally I approached a guy and said "Le Mat? Snake? We want to eat snake." He got a little twinkle in his eye and that wicked smile that told us he knew exactly what we were talking about. We piled into his cab and he called "his friend" on the phone. Pretty soon Eric was using the skills he picked up in the negotiation class he took in Bangkok to get the price of our meal to $5 per head (down from an opening offer of $20).

Le Mat turned out to be a dirty side street about 6 miles outside of Hanoi. As we turned down it, we quickly came upon a motorcycle gang wearing jackets with cobras on the back (it was all very Cobra Kai). When they saw us in the cab, they quickly converged on us and started grabbing on to the cab and shoving business cards through Eric's open window. Our cabbie sped away as Eric rolled up his window - as they ate our dust, our cabbie said "That's marketing" and we all had a good laugh.

We arrived at the restaurant and the owner was soon showing us cages with different snakes. He took a few out and knocked them around with a stick. They were certainly snakes and they were most definitely alive. None of us were very brave, we all stayed well away from the hissing and squirming and let the owner pick out a snake that would meet our needs. They quickly decided on one and then without any warning the owner smacked its head on the ground and they started cutting it open. The drained the blood and bile into glasses and then cut out its heart and liver. The heart kept beating and continued to beat as we took it upstairs while the owner prepared our drinks.

The drinks turned out to be whiskey with bile and then another that mostly consisted of snake blood and a little whiskey. He didn't say anything about it putting hair on our chest, but we knocked it back anyways. It basically tasted like very strong whiskey and we soon had a nice little buzz going. Then over the next 45 minutes or so, the owner brought out a succession of 8 dishes all made from the snake. Definitely check out the pictures to see everything. The snake mostly tasted like slightly rubberly chicken. Most of the dishes were dipped in a mixture of salt, pepper and lime so they also had a very salty taste. It was good, not great and I'm not rushing out to have it again, but it was definitely an adventure and a lot of fun (in that taboo type of way).

Good Morning, Vietnam!

Pretty much everything I know about Vietnam is from movies and a couple days of class time thrown in during high school history class. When I was about 9 or 10 I went to summer camp in Maine for the summer and one of the few cassette tapes we had was the soundtrack for Good Morning, Vietnam - it had a bunch of Robin Williams' lines from the movie and we all memorized them ("It's hot! Damn hot! Real hot! Hottest thing is my shorts. I could cook things in it.") And for a long time (longer than I should probably admit) Rambo, First Blood Part II was my second favorite movie (behind only the classic Red Dawn)...

This is all a long-winded way of saying my Vietnam knowledge is probably a bit too Hollywood and I don't have a great base to compare things to - with that said, it definitely won't prevent me from creating some new experiences while I am here, which is exactly what I've been doing for the past couple of days.

Currently, I am in Hanoi, which is the northern capital of Vietnam. Its a vibrant, but dreary city (largely due to the weather I think - its always overcast) and actually seems to be the most European place I've been (which shouldn't be a surprise given the French used to run things over here). I'm staying in the Old Quarter and I love it. The streets are very narrow and they twist and turn all over the place. Motorbikes seem to be the only form of transportation and they are everywhere. Crossing the street is an adventure - if you wait for the traffic to stop you could be there all day, you just need to take a deep breath and go for it. For the most part the bikes cruise around you. For the most part. Cambodia was similarly overrun by the motorbike, but here while they are weaving in and out they are also constantly honking their horns - one of the first things you notice is how loud the city is!

I've also noticed that for the most part the people leave you alone a bit more than they did in Bangkok. There are defintely tourists milling about, but certainly less than in Cambodia and Thailand. Hanoi doesn't seem to be a tourist city, the people go about their lives and for the most part don't take much mind as you walk down the streets.

The food is very different from Thailand, but fantastic. This may seem like a small thing, but they have great bread here! It's been awhile since I've had a nice baguette... Last night I went to a small hole in the wall place, called Cha Ca La Vong, where they served a Hanoi specialty called cha ca. It was the only dish the restaurant served and you sit down and they bring over a small fire and you cook little white fish fillets in a frying pan with peanut oil and greens (including a lot of dill). You eat it over white noodles. It was delicious, greasy, but delicious all the same.

For lunch today I had pho, which is kind of a beef and noodle soup - it warms you up pretty good, which is perfect because IT IS FREEZING HERE! I know I have no business complaining, but going from 100 degrees to 60's has been quite a change. I only have one sweatshirt with me, so you will probably see a lot of pictures with me wearing it! Luckily, as we head south it will warm up again.

Today I went exploring the city - I met a cool motorbike taxi guy in the morning and he stayed with me all day for 100,000 dong (which is about $6 - 15,000 dong = $1). He took me around to all the museums and would just wait outside for me. I'm definitely starting to enjoy the motorbike taxi rides - definitely a bit dangerous, but its a great way to see the city up close and personal.

The Army Museum and Hoa Lo Prison (a.k.a. the Hanoi Hilton) were pretty interesting in their descriptions of the American War (which is what they call the Vietnam War here). I noticed they used the word "puppet" a lot to describe both our administration during the war (i.e. "puppet president") and the American troops (i.e. "puppet soldiers") - I never did figure out who was supposedly the puppeteer. The Hoa Lo Prison was actually used by the French to hold the Vietamese revolutionaries and then later by the Vietamese to hold the Americans (including John McCain). According to the exhibits, the French tortured the Vietamese inmates by the hundreds, but although the Americans "committed untold crimes on our people, ... [they] suffered no revenge once they were captured and detained. Instead they were well treated with adequate food, clothing and shelter." A quick search on the web seems to indicate that there is a <slight> difference of opinion between the official Vietamese version of events and the experiences of the Americans that were held there. As you learn early on, there are two sides to every story...

Tomorrow, Eric and I are heading to Halong Bay for an overnight stay. Halong Bay is just off the Gulf on Tonkin and is supposed to have beautiful islands and caves to explore. I'll tell you all about it when I return!