My Time Traveling Brother and The Mekong Delta
Trip Start
Oct 24, 2005
1
26
150
Trip End
Ongoing
Can Tho,
Vietnam
Saturday, February 4, 2006
One of our first stops was the War Remnants Museum, which others had told us was not to be missed. Among Western tourists, this museum is apparently the most popular in Saigon. The museum houses a few leftover war vehicles (helicopters, tanks, etc.), but is mainly a collection of pictures from the war period. The pictures are accompanied by short summaries which, more often than not, are government propaganda (eg: The American War of Aggression). However, if one is able to look past the obviously biased accounts, it is quite informative and gives a fairly decent history of the wars and the subsequent years
Boats on the Mekong
. The museum also has an exhibit of children's drawings of peace and war, which is very sweet and heart-wrenching all at the same time. While there, we saw a photo of a US soldier that looks exactly like my brother, Pike. After sending the picture around, we're all convinced that Pike either has a much older "twin" or is a time traveler. See for yourself....We also spent a day walking around the Dong Khoi area, the "hip" part of town. We visited the Notre Dame Cathedral, the Reunification Palace, and the Tet flower show. On April 30, 1975, the Northern army drove its tanks over the gates of the Reunification Palace (known as Independence or Presidential Palace before the fall of the South), and officially won the war and claimed control of the country. Again we were faced w/government propaganda, unfortunately accompanied by the bland architecture of the 1960's (think Humanities), but it was still worth the visit. The Tet Flower Show takes place every year for a short time around Tet (the Chinese New Year). The show is street after street chock-full of orchids, marigolds, bonsai trees, and many more flowers the inept botanist in me certainly can't begin to identify. We visited during the few days following Tet when many people are still on vacation, so we were surrounded by families decked out in their New Year's best, jockeying for the best position to snap photos
Cai Rang Market
. After a week in Saigon, we decided to head to Can Thơ (pronounced Can Ter), a town in the Mekong Delta. In Can Thơ, we booked an eight hour boat trip along the Mekong. We bargained w/the man who approached us and got him down to $20 for the whole shebang: just the two of us in our own boat, him at the helm, two floating markets, mangroves and canals galore, an orchard, and rice paddies. It sounded great - apart from the 6:30 AM departure time.... We snoozed the alarm and ended up turning it off. I bolted awake at 6:20, realized what had happened, woke Konrad up, and scrambled to get ready. Surprisingly, we made our meeting on time, and then were told to follow another man to the boat. Problem #1: our outstanding English speaking guide had been replaced by a non-English speaking driver. We hit two floating markets: first Cai Rang, the biggest floating market in the Mekong, and then the highly touted Phong Dien. Here we watched as seasoned boaters navigated their crafts (anything from a tiny rowboat up to a large houseboat) through the "aisles" to barter and banter w/one another. Boats brimming w/pineapples floated by others filled w/flowers of every color of the rainbow. Banana boats drifted along as women on large vessels overflowing w/cabbages, leafy greens, squash, and onions tossed produce to men perched, waiting on dinghies.
In between markets, Problem #2 presented itself: our driver stopped to pick up a woman and her adorable little puppy
Cai Rang Market - Banana Boat
. We were a bit annoyed, as we were supposed to have the boat to ourselves, but we assumed we would take a slight detour to her house and be done w/her. Minutes turned into hours (four, in fact), and the woman stayed on the boat. Her dog was adorable, but she was decidedly annoying - esp. her banshee-like voice. She obstructed our brilliant photo ops and screeched incessantly to the driver. I assured myself I was fine w/it - Problem #1 + Problem #2 ≠ $20, and I was going to make sure we paid less for being stuck w/a driver we couldn't glean local information from and having to put up w/a freeloading banshee (however cute her puppy was). We bobbed down the Mekong, taking in the sights: families living in tiny houseboats, big barges steaming upstream, and loads of people bathing, brushing their teeth, and doing laundry in the river. Admittedly, this river doesn't have quite the obscene coliform count found in the Ganges at Varanasi where we saw the same occurrences some years ago, but the numbers certainly exceed accepted levels, and the problem definitely isn't made any better by the casual dumping of trash directly into the river. Nonetheless, it is obvious for those who reside around the Mekong that their lives revolve around the river: it provides many w/their livelihood (fish), supplies them w/water to wash themselves and their clothes, and carries away their trash
Cai Rang Market - Baskets
. Unfortunately, it also often floods, displacing tens of thousands, and claiming hundreds of lives. Upon returning to Can Thơ, we argued w/the driver about the money (quite difficult, as we needed an interpreter - oddly enough, the same woman who had helped us a day earlier 20 kms from where we were now). He tugged at Konrad's clothes, telling us we were rich, and we tried to explain that we weren't really mad at him, but rather his boss. In the end, rather than stand there all day quarreling, I agreed to pay him the full amount and told him to have his boss come back to our hotel that night. Would you believe me if I told you his boss never showed up? However, when all was said and done, we had a nice trip.
The next day we headed back to Saigon, and back to our lovely guesthouse (where they gave us an even bigger room for the same price!). Seriously, if any of you are ever in Saigon, stay at Guest House California: in-room internet (and also in the lobby if you don't have a computer), super clean, A/C and fans, beautiful furniture, hot water showers, satellite TV w/all the desired channels, a fridge, and the world's best hosts. Not only were they extremely nice, but they made us pizzas (on two separate occasions), did our laundry (for free), gave us beer, and took good care of us
Cai Rang Market - Cabbage Boat
. We mainly bummed around Saigon during this four-day stay, but did spend one day on a tour. For $5 (plus a $4 admission fee at the tunnels) we spent ten hours traveling to and taking in the Cao Dai Holy See at Tay Ninh and the Cu Chi Tunnels in, oddly enough, Cu Chi. Cao Daism is a religion that was founded in Vietnam in 1926. It is a religion that blends Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Vietnamese spiritualism, Christianity, and Islam. While it relies on all these religions, it derives most of its principles from Buddhism, w/a bit of Confucianism and Taoism thrown in (eg: the Cao Daist believes in reincarnation, and her/his aim is to break her/himself out of this cycle). As I said, we visited the Cao Dai Holy See, which is where it all began, where the administrative home of the religion lies, and is home to the Cao Dai Great Temple. The Great Temple is full of levels, nine in all, each of which symbolizes one step towards heaven, which is depicted on the ceiling as a blue and starry sky. The altar supports the Divine Eye, which can see all, good and bad. At the Great Temple, there are four ceremonies a day: midnight, 6:00 AM, noon, and 6:00 PM. We were fortunate enough to witness part of the noon ceremony. Hundreds of women and men in white robes flooded the temple to take part in the ceremony. There were also many men in red, yellow, and blue dress, each color representing a different component religion
Cai Rang Market - Pineapple Boat
. An "orchestra" played while the congregation chanted and intoned. Unfortunately, we had to leave shortly after it began and head toward the Cu Chi Tunnels. The Cu Chi Tunnels are a network of underground tunnels built by the Viet Cong forces in the 1940s and 1950s and later expanded upon and improved during the Vietnam War. Their proximity to Saigon (30 kms) made them incredibly strategic: the tunnels gave the Viet Cong access to a large area of the South, which enabled them to communicate across Southern controlled areas, launch surprise attacks, and move about undetected. Another amazing detail is the extent of the tunnels: during their peak, the tunnels covered an area from Saigon all the way to the Cambodian border. The tunnels were built w/complete living accommodations underground, including kitchens w/special ventilation systems so as to conceal their cooking - don't get me wrong, they weren't luxurious by any stretch of the imagination, but for an subterranean abode created by hand, it was pretty impressive. All the entries were well concealed by brush, and there were plenty of trapdoors and hidden surprises waiting for the enemy troops (which made it quite a dangerous task for the Southern and American forces to invade the tunnels, and in fact, many lives were lost this way).
Upon arrival, we were given a short presentation on the tunnels' history and then shown a short movie
Cai Rang Market - Woman Rowing
. The movie was filmed in 1967 by the Viet Cong and was complete and utter propaganda - no question about it (eg: American killer so-and-so, etc.) - yet it is still being shown. From there, we were given a tour of a number of the tunnels' features (eg: the trapdoors, an excavated kitchen, etc.). Then we were given an opportunity to crawl through 100 meters of the actual tunnels. The tunnel was short and musty, and the scant 100 meters seemed to take a bit longer than one would expect. There were some areas we had to crawl on our hands and knees, otherwise we were crouched down. Not a life I'd opt for. Oh, and lest I forget, there is also a shooting range at the tunnels where visitors are able to fire war era weapons. Ugh.Apart from the tour, not much else happened in during this jaunt to Saigon (other than me accidentally sticking my fingers in the fan - don't worry, it may have bled a lot, but it was all superficial), and before we knew it, we were saying goodbye to California and headed into the mountains to the town of Dalat.
