Vietnam was by far one of my favorite ports (although I’m sure I’ve said that about at least four other ports; but hey, we keep going to new places!). I went on a four-day biking trip with 20 other students who organized the trip independently with a travel agency – the whole shebang, including five-star hotels, food, supplies and tours at various places, costing a whopping total of $215 USD.
Our first stop was to a restaurant to have a traditional Vietnamese lunch. Most of us weren’t too excited about the food, to be honest. A whole fish – scales and eyes and all -- that had been dropped in a fryer was placed in front of us for us to pick at with chopsticks (we nicknamed our table’s fish Herbert). Then we had some shrimp, some clear soup with vegetables, and some kind of beef. This basically sums up the meal that we had at every restaurant we went to.
Then we hopped on a ferry and floated over to a factory where rice candy is made. We got to see them popping the rice and mixing it with sugar and making it into different types of candy, all of which we got to sample. The factory was really hot, and it was 90 degrees outside, so I felt pretty bad for the workers who had to cook rice all day.
Then we had the option to try cobra shots. A cobra shot is literally a whole cobra preserved in some kind of rice wine. The venom is said to mix with the wine and give it medicinal properties. Personally, the whole thing sort of freaked me out so I didn’t try it, but lots of my friends did. (They said it was absolutely disgusting). There’s another variation on the cobra shot that I heard about from some other SASers that sounded even lovelier: someone cuts off the head of a live cobra right in front of you and pours the blood into a shot glass containing a little alcohol. Then you drink the blood/alcohol. If you’re lucky, you get to swallow the cobra’s heart while it’s still beating. I kid you not. I’ve talked to some people claim to have done it.
Anyway, I didn’t have the guts to do anything like that but kudos to the students who can brag about drinking cobra’s blood.
After that, we went on a relaxing afternoon cruise along the river. People living in houses along the water waved at us and came out of their houses to see us. We were taken to a house that belonged to a wealthy Vietnamese family and doubled as a bed and breakfast. We watched a music and dance performance, and then we slept on cots outside. The house was very beautiful – really traditional and old.
The next morning we woke up early and got on our bikes. The trail went along the Mekong Delta on a trail that ran through the woods, past local houses. Everyone waved to us as we walked by, and occasionally we had to break hard to allow for passing chickens. The weather was nice that day too – hot but dry and really pleasant in the shade of all the trees. I took a bunch of pictures.
We ate lunch at a small restaurant (same lunch as before, plus or minus prawns, so I’ll spare you the details) and visited a terracotta factory where clay pots were made. My favorite things were the huge kilns they used to bake the clay. Again, it was extremely hot and I felt so bad for the employees who had to work there every day! After the tour, we got back on our bikes and made our way into town and to a hotel.
We cycled about 60 kilometers on the first day. I wasn’t especially tired from the biking but it was hot and the bicycle seat was really narrow and starting to get extremely uncomfortable (I was literally bruised after the trip), so I was glad to have a break. The hotel was really nice too. After dinner, a few of us walked around to get a feel for the area, and then we conked out early. By the way, I would love to divulge the name of the city we were in (we were very far away from Saigon at this point), but I honestly can’t remember and I can’t point it out on a map because I had no idea where we were and neither does anyone else who went with me! It was nice to get away from everything though, and we were really in a remote part of Vietnam.
The next morning our guide took us to the floating market, which is where everyone comes out on their boats to buy and sell fruit, vegetables, animals for meat – any kind of food you can think of. While we were drifting along, a few “river vendors” rowed up to us, held on to the side of our boat, and tried to sell us cans of coke. It was such a neat experience. Some boats had huge pigs on them, some had chickens, some had melons stacked to the brim. Many of the vendors seemed to live on their boats too – a few were bathing while we floated by (and got really embarrassed when a couple students tried to take pictures), and some had satellites hooked up to the top so that they could watch TV.
Then we had some more biking – 45 kms worth. This time, people were getting really tired and really uncomfortable. We begged our tour guide to take us to a restaurant that was a little different from the others (like I said, most of us weren’t big fans of the food), and he took us to his wife’s aunt’s road-side stop. We were a little confused because it didn’t really look like a restaurant, but they brought out plates and plates of incredible food, vegan-everything. We had an amazing lemongrass curry, pineapple rice, bok choy, noodles, little bananas, mango – absolutely one of the best meals I’ve had on this entire trip.
At the end of that day’s biking, everyone was completely exhausted, and we finally stumbled into our hotel at about 8 p.m. after about 8 full hours of biking. Again, we pretty much passed out after dinner.
We left really early the next morning to head back into Ho Chi Min – a seven hour drive. Most of us slept the whole way until we got back within city limits. Our guide took us to the Cu Chi Tunnels, which were really pretty amazing. If you don’t know, they’re tiny tunnels that Vietnamese soldiers used during the war (which, by the way, they call the American War, whereas we call it the Vietnam War). The tunnels were maybe 4 feet high, two feet wide, and we were all crouching or on our hands and knees. And the particular tunnels that we went in to had been widened for tourists.
Then we had the option to fire off machine guns, which a few of the guys in my group signed up for readily. It was so loud – it made me realize how horrifying it would be running through the woods and hearing gunshots close to you.
We also got to see some of the traps the Vietnamese would use on Americans – I have to say, some of them were downright sadistic. One was a trap door that rotates when you step on it, causing you to fall in a pit full of sharpened bamboo stems. Our tour guide said Vietnamese preferred to injure American soldiers so that other soldiers would have to help them, so they did things like put rotting cow tongues on the spikes so that the wound would get infected. Pretty terrible.
After our informative little tour, we were driven back into Ho Chi Min. I went out with my roommate to a club called Apocalypse Now, which I thought was ironic, and danced for a little while in a very upscale part of town (we’re talking Louis Vuitton and Gucci – a stark contrast to the river houses I had seen people living in just the day before).
On my last day in Vietnam, I went out shopping at a strange market that was set up like a mall, but basically everything in the entire building was a knock-off. Fake jewelry (set up very professionally), fake handbags, fake perfume, fake computer supplies (I got a camera charger and a 2G memory card for $15 USD), and bootleg DVDs. Really strange place. Everything was dirt cheap, and vendors expected you to bargain. I bought a bunch of DVDs and a couple of fun souvenirs.
Then it was time to get back on the ship, which was really sad because I’d enjoyed Vietnam so much. It’s really a beautiful, fun, interesting country that I would love to go back and visit again.
Monday, April 14, 2008
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