Ho Chi Minh
Trip Start
Jan 24, 2007
1
7
Trip End
May 14, 2007
Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam
Monday, April 9, 2007
anything when you think of Vietnam, you think of the war. The truth is
that besides the War Remnants museum, people in Vietnam aren't all that
freaked out about the war anymore.
We did a lot of walking around
in general in Ho Chi Minh. Crossing the street is almost the same as
swimming in a pool of sharks with a paper cut, there's a pretty good
chance you might get bitten. However, just as the band aid comes in
useful, making sure no cars are coming and then continuing at a steady
pace, without looking left or right is helpful. Blissful ignorance is
key. As long as you continue steadily people on the cyclos will swerve
around you. The only way you could really get hurt is if you stop or
start to run. After a few days you could tell which people had just
made it to Vietnam, by the way they hesitate before crossing the
street.
Pollution, just like in India is a pretty big problem, so people wear
these cloth masks, that cover their mouth. Most people wear the masks
when they're on the cyclos. The cyclos are so much fun to ride. The
driver weaves in and out of traffic and goes super fast. If you grab a
couple of cyclos with someone else, then the drivers race to the said
destination. However the cyclos were dangerous. A lot of people burned
their legs on the muffler, when they were getting off. Got to get off
on the left side.
The Bentahn Market was defiantly a cultural experience. About three
hundred stalls are squished into a building. You can find almost
anything in the market. Any t-shirt imaginable is within this market.
The best ones are in English and make no sense what so ever. A lot of
old propaganda is available for sale too, even some new stuff. I found
the coolest book of propaganda from around the world about George W.
Bush. Bush's confused face makes every photo spectacular, especially
the one of him taking a bath in oil. One night Maria and I were
wandering around after dinner and we stumbled upon an art gallery. This
gallery had 35 artists working for them. A few artists did fairly good
copies of Picasso, and other famous artists. We spent almost two hours
their.
We went to the Independent Palace, which briefly speaks of Vietnam's
continuous struggle for independence. They also have an interesting
amount of old boats that are found and drug up from the Siagon River,
and a display of Vietnamese weddings. We were also led through 50 feet
of a winding tunnel into a bomb shelter. The only sad thing was that in
this bomb shelter display there were only three pictures and a chair
and we had no idea what they were about.
One day we met up with a kid named Long, he's 12, but looks like he's
8. Long offers tours to tourists and says he loves Semester at Sea
students. He has so much energy and something to say about everything.
Long loves to sew and wants to study business, He's even come up with a
business to start up eventually. He wants to start a restaurant and he
says he'll let his uncle wash the dishes or wait tables. Currently his
uncle drives the car, while Long gives the tour. Long really already
has his own business.
First we went to a Taoist temple. It was at the time they were
worshipping so we were able to see the whole ceremony. Taoism is pretty
cool. They believe Buddha, Jesus, Muhammed and all the other prophets/
spiritual leaders were all one being that visited earth in different
forms, because people understand things in different ways. All over the
temple there were signs of Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. There
were about six or seven platforms that the people were sitting on to
pray. It was fairly hierarchical, the hishest members of each platform
wore a different color robe, based on which prophet they most agreed
with. Red = Christianity, Yellow = Buddhism, Green = Hindu. They pray
three times a day, 6 am, 12pm, and 6pm. The one at noon is an hour and
ten minutes while the others are only a half hour. Towards the front of
the temple there are five chairs and one really big chair. Those are
for the king. The new initiates sit in the back, sing and play
instruments. It's pretty beautiful, the grounds, garden, and temple.
We had lunch with Long and his Uncle and in the process I felt like I
was huge. Both of them just had small portions of everything, they
could have shared a meal. But only three of us ate enough for four.
Again I felt huge. During lunch I taught Long how to use my camera, he
adopted it for the day and took tons of pictures, all of which turned
out really great.
Next we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels, these were the tunnels that the
Vietnamese used in the war. Every 10 meters there was an air
ventilation hole that was camouflaged to look like a pile of dirt. The
holes that the Vietnamese used to get inside the tunnels were tiny! I
could have barely tuck my leg down it, let alone got my whole body
down, and these guys jumped down them. We crawled through a 30 meter
section, that was 40% bigger than what they usually used and these guys
must have been speedy. They crawled literally on their stomach and they
had to go fast, especially if they were under fire. They also used most
of the traps that had previously been used for tigers on the soldiers.
Poor soldiers, these guys knew what they were doing. On the way back
home Long taught us a card game where the point was to make three cards
add up to nine. We taught him Go Fish and War.
