Year of the Rat
Trip Start
Jul 11, 2008
1
13
14
Trip End
Aug 13, 2008
Mekong Delta,
Vietnam
Friday, August 1, 2008
A lot has happened since we left the relaxing beach town of Nha Trang. We took an uneventful night bus and arrived in the bustling city of Ho Chi Minh, or Saigon as it is called by everyone outside of government officials ( I guess the name change did not stick that well). We arrived in the city at 6am and decided to go check out some of the sights. Saigon is the largest city in Vietnam and it is quite different than Hanoi in the north. First impressions: the streets seem a lot wider and there seem to be a lot more large buildings, foreign corporations, and expensive restaurants than Hanoi. Everywhere we went in the city there were construction cranes with artists-renderings of the future developments planned for the sights.
Since we had already checked out several of the obligatory Ho Chi Minh museums that proliferate in every city in Vietnam, we decided to skip the one here and instead go to the "Reunification Palace." We wanted to tour the old seat of the South Vietnamese Government and the location of the surrender in 1975, where the famous photo of the tank charging through the gate took place (actually, we learned that the first tank got stuck as the gate was too small and the tank driver got out and ran into the palace to hoist the Communist flag and "accept" their surrender. A second tank decided to try the larger gate and made it through shortly after).
The palace was amazing. Everything looked just as it did on the fateful day of surrender over thirty years ago (everything that is except the bomb that was air-dropped on a small section of the palace by a turncoat Southern Vietnamese general). We opted to tag around with an English-speaking tour guide instead of walking around and exploring on our own.
The palace has a strange Austin Powers feel to it, with plush red carpets and a strange mix of Western, Eastern, and 1960's décor. We saw the stuffed leopards and cheetahs the president liked to keep in his office. We walked into the map room where the maps, replete with troop and enemy movements, appear as they did. We toured the president's secret bunker and saw the radio room where the radios and typewriters you see in old war movies lined the desks. I wanted to pick up the rotary phone and ask a private to bring me some coffee and a map of Sector 6, but I thought the better of it and kept walking. At the top of the building the president had installed a hard-wood dance floor where he apparently liked to entertain guests while his wife watched films in the then state-of-the-art cinema.
After the trip to the palace we decided to book a trip to the Mekong Delta. We figured we would continue exploring the city for a couple of days after we got back from the Mekong before going to Cambodia
Year of the Rat:
After the trip to the palace we decided to book a trip to the Mekong Delta. We figured we would continue exploring Saigon after returning from the Mekong diversion.
We wanted a break from being herded around in large tour groups so we booked a private two-day tour of the Mekong with our own guide and a driver. It was so worth it. We were pretty much able to customize our tour and had a great time.
Our tour guide was an older gentleman who had been a teacher prior to being drafted to fight for the South. After being grazed by a bullet he was discharged. He continued teaching after reunification until it was discovered that he had relatives in the US and he was sacked. Because of his English skills he became a tour guide. He was perfect for us. As a teacher he was very knowledgeable about historical questions we asked, and, as we were the only ones on the tour, we felt comfortable peppering him with questions. Which he obliging answered.
The mighty Mekong River begins in Tibet/China and winds its way through several countries in SE Asia before dividing into several tributary rivers and traversing the alluvial planes of Vietnam's Mekong Delta. This alluvium has built up over the years and brought fertile soil to the Delta. Fruit and rice grow in abundance without fertilizers.
Most of the delta can only be traversed by boat, as rivers and canals are the roads of the delta. Dan and I were in our own small boat and it felt wonderful to pass the larger tourist boats and enter small canals which are impassable to all but the small boats. In our long, narrow boat, which was captained by a young boy and his sister, a generator sized motor sat on a moveable platform where a long protruding shaft jutted into the water with a 10-inch rotor on the end. The young teen was adept at maneuvering this contraption around and clearing the rotor when it got stuck on floating plant debris. The local inhabitants use the river and canals for everything, and I mean everything. The latte colored water is used for everything from clothes and veggie washing, swimming, to garbage and restroom disposal.
The weather was perfect. It was not hot at all and after a short time on the boat the sky opened up and it poured. But it rapidly slowed to a drizzle and we watched the rain fall as we ate "Elephant Ear" fish at a deserted restaurant on stilts which was accessible only by the river. After a long day of cruising the river we stopped for the night at our prearranged hotel. We had told our guide that we wanted to try snake and he took us to a hidden restaurant down a small ally. We felt like Anthony Bourdain as we sat down on mettle stools in the wonderfully grungy place. Unfortunately, they were out of snake, but they did have snake wine and the rat came highly recommended. After being reassured that it was not "city rat" we ordered the barbecued rat. It was actually quite tasty. The meat was dark and rich (like duck) and the spicy flavor gave it a little kick as we nibbled away the small bits of meat from the rat's tiny bones. Where were the fries?
After several other dishes, including some forgettable deep-fried pork belly, our guide suggested we go dancing. Dan and I were unsure. I am not a big dancer and we were not sure what kind of "dancing" this place offered. After being reassured that this place was a ballroom/disco hall, we decided to check it out, mainly to please our tour guide who seemed eager to go. As we sat down in the large dance hall on the third floor of a mall. with some ice-coffee we saw a wide age range of people ballroom dancing (some quite well). Our guide, whom we soon nicknamed "the dancing king," adroitly navigated the table dance after dance and danced with almost all the women in the hall. We cheered him on and we soon began a game of guessing who he would ask to dance next. We wanted to spare the locals from seeing two large foreigners performing the dreaded "white-boy" dance and so happily stayed off the dance floor.
The next day we tooled around the Mekong's small canals and large rivers, some at least two miles wide, saw the large floating market, and visited a personal friend of our guide who lives by the river and grows a myriad assortment of fruit and veggies and raises snakes and other animals. After carefully and slowly sipping his homemade snake-wine, from "snakes whose venom can kill in 15 minutes," we headed back to Saigon.
Tomorrow morning we are headed for Cambodia on the early bus. I trust there will be more adventures to come. Thanks for putting up with the backup blogger. Daniel will be back, I promise.
Comments
Sounds tasty...
did you get to pick out the rat that you ate?
Hope you took a pic of it.
Mmmmm...rats with snake juice
:-P
Sounds like quite the interesting feast - had either of you eaten rat before?