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Goodbye Vietnam, No Signs of Charlie...
Entry 19 of 19 | show all | print this entry |
It sort of looks like it's been a while since I last wrote sorry if this is long... The rest of Vietnam went by really quickly. We were ripping through the country at record-breaking pace and were always busy so it felt a bit rushed and tiring to me... First of all, it's a really long country so it takes ages to travel and second of all there's just so many places to see and things to do. After more than four months on the road I've figured out that I'm the type of person who likes to chill out and get the feel of a place for a week or two rather than zip from place to place, see all the sights and then book the first bus to the next stop... A valuable lesson to keep in mind for myself if I make another trip such as this one in the future which I'm beginning to think is quite likely.
Anyhow, the rest of Vietnam we made stops in Dalat, Mui Ne and then crazy Saigon. I think Dalat wound up being one of my favorite cities in Vietnam. It was full of hills and was a mixture of the craziness that I've come to associate with Vietnam along with a bit more of a laid-back, country feeling to it. Also, a rest from the tireless touts was very welcome. I think that other than in the towns of Dalat and Hoi An, the words I spoke more than any others were "No Thank You." But anyways, Dalat was a nice break and we also did some pretty cool stuff there. We signed up to do a canyoning / abseiling trip which wound up being a hell of a time and some much needed exercise as well. Basically, it involved some hiking in the jungle along a river until we would reach a cliff / waterfall and then we would anchor a rope to a tree and then scramble 20 or 30m down the waterfall getting soaked the whole time. We did a few of those as well as a couple of natural water-slides which were also pretty fun.
Another interesting thing about Dalat was that it catered primarily to Vietnamese tourists. We read in our "Rough Guide to Vietnam" that there was a cool place to see called 'the valley of love' so Karl and I rented some motorbikes and made it one of our stops... sigh. I was leading the way and forgot how to get there so I pulled over, pulled out my map and a nice Vietnamese man came up to ask us where we were going. It took me a couple of seconds to get over my emberassment before I mumbled under my breath that we (two guys) were lost and looking for the valley of love. He told us where it was, but I swear I saw a bit of a smirk... Probably all in my head, but still... Then we got there and it was the tackiest place I've ever seen. It would have been a nice place (a picturesque lake surrounded by hills) except for all of the statues of swans with their necks formed to look like hearts and all of that type of cheezy stuff. The couples together in the swan paddle-boats didn't help my sense of being in the wrong place either. The Mickey and Minnie Mouse statues at the front gate were a bit odd as well. So we decided to get the hell out of there in a hurry.
From Dalat we booked a way over-priced, but enjoyable overnight motorcycle tour with the Easy Riders, a group of older Vietnamese guys who do country-side motorcycle tours for a living. We got to see tons of small family businesses and how they made a lot of local Vietnamese products. The cooler places were the silk-worm breeding family, and the rice-wine making family who let us try a bit of their vile product. We went to tons of other families' homes as well which were pretty interesting including an engagement party. Despite being over-priced there really isn't too much of a way to see the more authentic aspects of the country unless you can speak some of the language or if you're living over there or know someone. So I'm glad we decided to do it. We also had all of our meals with these two guys and they told us some pretty crazy stories about Vietnam's history and about the war and about their families as well. The next day they dropped us off at Mui Ne for some kite-surfing action.
To make a long story short, kite-surfing is expensive. We both signed up for a 5 hour introduction course for a whopping $200 (about a week's budget) Needless to say when you're paying $40/hour to learn something that's quite difficult, every time I would mess up it was like I was being stabbed in the heart. Also, the conditions when we were there were pretty inconsistent so the first day was very windy and choppy and then the next day there really wasn't enough wind at all. I was looking forward to getting to Saigon and since the course was going to take an extra day I wound up getting a bit less than half of my money back since I didn't really see myself taking up kite-boarding at home anyways. So I went to Saigon to party and Karl stayed behind for a few days, loved it and picked himself up a brand new hobby which he'll be able practice back home in Penticton... luck guy!
Saigon was pretty much just another city, but a little different since it has 8 million people living there and 4 million motorbikes!!! I actually really enjoyed crossing the street over there because unlike cars, motorbikes can just dodge around you as long as you walk slowly and surely across the street. A couple of cool things I did in Saigon were seeing the War Remnants museum which showcased a lot of the atrocities of the Vietnam war, in particular the effects of Agent Orange which were really sad. But the main thing I think it showed was how pointless the whole war was and how much of a shame it was for so many people to be hurt for no reason. The next day I crawled through some of the Viet-Cong's very claustrophobic, secret Cu Chi tunnels (made larger to fit the fat Western foreigners!!) They were really impressive, both in their scale (I think about 200 miles of tunnels) as well as in their ingenius ways of not being detected. Some pretty messed up booby traps for any unwelcome visitors to the tunnels as well. After that I shot 5 rounds of an AK-47 which I could only describe as unsettling, especially after seeing the war remnants museum and crawling through the tunnels.
Another crazy experience in Saigon was sitting and eating dinner outside of a restaurant next to a whole bunch of some of the most emberassing excuses for people I've met so far on the trip (and there's been many!) First of all there was a group of 40 to 50-somethings who all worked in Saigon who seemed very strung-out and were all just hammered and talking shit to each other for no reason. At one point it seemed like things were heating up to almost the point of blows and the group of us sitting next to them were half-laughing under our breath and half-hoping that there wouldn't be any trouble. Thankfully they all left, but were only to be replaced by another group of douchebags. These guys were even worse. You could tell by the way they spoke and acted that these guys were complete losers back home and then they come over here, hook up with a few Asian prostitutes, and then think that they're hot shit. Then this illusion of power gets into their stupid little heads and they act like complete assholes to the local people. In my opinion this type of behavior is complete bullshit and it's a real shame that these amazing countries and their kind people have to put up with this type of scum. The worst part of it though is that I feel absolutely helpless to really do anything about it. Not the only time on this trip I've felt this way and unfortunately probably not the last. I'm sorry about the rant, but I think it's important for people to understand some of the darker sides of what goes on over here.
The day after this night out we booked ourselves onto a very unmemorable and poorly organized Mekong Delta boat tour which continued up the Mekong to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Good bye Vietnam.
Here are a few random things I noticed in Vietnam:
1) The people here honk their horns while driving more than I've ever seen in my life. I'm convinced that they don't even hear it anymore.
2) The people (at least in the country-side) actually do wear those conical (Rayden) hats.
3) The currency is called Dong... Dong!!! (Sorry, I know I've beaten that one to death...)
4) Vietnamese women wear pyjamas a lot.
5) While walking alone around Saigon at mid-day I saw a guy in a suit peeing against a telephone pole. About a half-hour later, I saw a well-dressed lady squatting right in the middle of a crowded sidewalk peeing while the people casually walked around her. Weird.
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