Now in Ho Chi Minh City, which everyone still calls "Saigon." In fact, we noticed on the flight down here that the HCMC International Airport 3-letter designation is "SGN." But I'm getting ahead of things.
The day after my last post, we had a free day in Hoi An. I rented a moto and spent several hours just exploring the city and surrounds (long pants this time). I drove out to the beach, which was a bit overrun by luxury resorts for my taste. Then, after lunch, I drove around the two little islands in the river downtown. Hoi An oldtown is around the riverfront but generally doesn't go across it. Therefore, there aren't really any tourists who venture much into the islands, at least not past the thin veneer of restaurants and shops directly across the river. Almost all trip long, my best experiences have happened off the beaten tourist path, so I was happy to get lost in back-alley Hoi An. And lost I got. Those islands are just a maze of tiny streets twisting every which way. I didn't mind getting lost because I knew I was on a small island and would eventually figure it out. But then I decided it was time to go back across the river and started looking for landmarks. When I finally found one, I realized I was on the exact opposite side of the island from where I thought I was. It was really discombobulating, like I stepped through a wormhole or something. In the meantime I got lots of curious smiles and hello's from the people on the island. And when I stopped to take a picture at one point, and old woman with surprisingly good English struck up a conversation with me. I told her I was from the US and that my dad was vet. She told me she learned to speak English from some GI's and from tourists. We talked briefly about the war, which concluded when she said something like, "I think Americans try to help, but they make it worse." Then, after a long pause, "Same now, in Iraq." I raised an eyebrow and a grin and told her I thought she was very smart. I forgot to ask her name.
The flight to Saigon yesterday was uneventful and quick. But Steven's hotel plans for Saigon got messed up through some miscommunication somewhere, and we had a bit of a time finding a place to stay. In fact, we had to find two hotels because of limited availability. The six others are in three doubles at one hotel, and I'm in a single at another hotel a block and a half away. What's more, my room is tiny and has now windows, giving it the vague feel of a prison cell. It's only for three nights, but I'm not crazy about it, especially since the other hotel has a pool, and mine doesn't.
Maybe it's just because I'm ready to get home, but I can't say I like Saigon much. It's way too much like New York to be interesting. Whoever said we lost the war hasn't walked through downtown Saigon lately. You may be in a one-party state, but it's all about the capitalism here. There are also lots of western companies here, unlike anywhere else we've been. There's a KFC about 200 yards from my hotel. All around the city center, there are high end clothing stores catering to richer tourists than I and to VN's nueveaux riche. Also as with NYC, eating is much more expensive here. Last night I paid 120,000 VND for dinner. That's only about $8 US, but it's over twice what we've been paying for comparable meals everywhere else, including Hanoi.
This afternoon we're going to the War Museum, which should be interesting and possibly disturbing. Then tomorrow we're taking a Me Kong delta day tour. Then...we come home. I honestly can't wait to get on that flight home (well, really the first of three flights, but you know what I mean). A month is too long to be away from the family, so Saigon better what out over the next two days. I'm in a pissy, homesick mood.
Stu
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Smelly Europeans
In Hoi An now. Now THIS is a town worth visiting...unlike Da Nang, which is horrible. To be fair, my bad feelings (OUR bad feelings, since pretty much all of us feel this way) are mostly about the hotel. No internet in the hotel, even though they told us they had it. Some really dodgy payment procedures for laundry and drinks. Copious cigarette smoke and flies in the breakfast room. And all they had was pineapple jam! I mean, really. Who lives like that?!
We arrived in Hoi An (not to be confused with Hanoi) yesterday mid-day, and it's night and day to Da Nang. This is a beautiful little town with an old-town city center that wasn't damaged in the war--one of the few such places in the country. Also, this is the first time on the trip we've been in a hotel with a swimming pool. That's a pretty nice way to get away from the heat here. Would've been nice in Hue. Oh, well. Matt also appreciates all the 20-something tourists in their bikinis.
Speaking of European tourists, let me tell you about the tour Steven, Matt, and I took to My Son this morning. (Looks like "my son," pronounced "mee sone.") My Son is an ancient ruin site about 30km to the west of Hoi An. I couldn't tell you when it dates from because our tour guide's English was opaque. I could make out about every third word, barely, and the overall ideas of what he was trying to say eluded me. However, this much I think I got: My Son is a ruin from the Cham culture, which dominated large parts of southeast Asia hundreds of years ago (root of the word "Cambodia"). I think this is the same culture that created the temples at Angkor Wat. The architecture at My Son is very similar to Angkor Wat. There were aspects of Hinduism visible in the ruins, which surprised me because I didn't realize that Hinduism ever reached this far east. At any rate, they were beautiful and very old, everything a good ruin is supposed to be.
There was one area within the ruins, which are really several separate sites all within about 1 km of each other, that had collapsed from nearby U.S. bombing during the war. Then, walking through the ruins, we saw several signs saying that such-and-such excavation/restoration/presentation had been made possible by contributions from various countries: Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Japan, Australia. I know a few of you might get your hackles raised by what I'm about to say, but I have to say I'm a little ashamed of this. The basic model since the beginning of the Cold War seems to be that we destroy things, and other people sort it out. There have been several times in VN when I've seen some indication somewhere that something was funded by a certain country or group or individual within a country. All over the OGCDC offices, for instance, every piece of equipment that was donated has a little note on it saying who donated and showing that national flag. Rarely, very rarely, have I seen the US flag or the US mentioned as a donor for some worthwhile cause here. I know there are plenty of examples of US aid going to good work elsewhere in the world, but the amount of US foreign aid overall is so paltry it's barely worth mentioning. I mean, can we really not beat out Poland?! Honestly. But enough with that heavy stuff, back to the tour.
After walking through the sweaty jungle all morning, we got back in the van for home with the other people on the tour, a mix of Dutch, Danes, and Germans. When we got in the van, we were all hit like a wall with a deeply pungent armpit smell. Now, our whole group got plenty sweaty in vans around Hue, and we never smelled anything like this. Foreign aid be damned...Americans just smell better than Europeans. They stunk, bad. So the next time a European gives you a superior cultural air, just let them know that Americans just smell better, with or without Chanel 5.
Stu
There was one area within the ruins, which are really several separate sites all within about 1 km of each other, that had collapsed from nearby U.S. bombing during the war. Then, walking through the ruins, we saw several signs saying that such-and-such excavation/restoration/presentation had been made possible by contributions from various countries: Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Japan, Australia. I know a few of you might get your hackles raised by what I'm about to say, but I have to say I'm a little ashamed of this. The basic model since the beginning of the Cold War seems to be that we destroy things, and other people sort it out. There have been several times in VN when I've seen some indication somewhere that something was funded by a certain country or group or individual within a country. All over the OGCDC offices, for instance, every piece of equipment that was donated has a little note on it saying who donated and showing that national flag. Rarely, very rarely, have I seen the US flag or the US mentioned as a donor for some worthwhile cause here. I know there are plenty of examples of US aid going to good work elsewhere in the world, but the amount of US foreign aid overall is so paltry it's barely worth mentioning. I mean, can we really not beat out Poland?! Honestly. But enough with that heavy stuff, back to the tour.
After walking through the sweaty jungle all morning, we got back in the van for home with the other people on the tour, a mix of Dutch, Danes, and Germans. When we got in the van, we were all hit like a wall with a deeply pungent armpit smell. Now, our whole group got plenty sweaty in vans around Hue, and we never smelled anything like this. Foreign aid be damned...Americans just smell better than Europeans. They stunk, bad. So the next time a European gives you a superior cultural air, just let them know that Americans just smell better, with or without Chanel 5.
Stu
Monday, June 4, 2007
Hog burns
I'm sorry it's been so long since the last post. We were pretty busy during the last few days in Hue, and it took a while to track down an internet cafe here in Da Nang. I'm covering several days here, so I apologize for the very long stream-of-consciousness post below.
My title refers to an adventure Matt and I had on Sunday. We rented a couple of motorbikes and went looking for footage of city and country life. This is what's called B-roll, illustrative shots that may or may not be used in the film but which are nice to have if you find you need them. Since the OGCDC is in Hue, we needed some footage of life around the city. We also wanted some more farming footage, despite my little run-in with that cow.
So, we rented bikes from the hotel at $1 USD/hour, threw the camera in Matt's bag and the tripod in mine and set off. Now, the motorbikes in question are more like amped up mopeds. Matt kept jokingly referring to his as a hog, but these things don't exactly scream "Easy Rider." They're pretty much the same thing you see all over the place in Europe. Also, virtually no one here wears a helmet, so renting one of those was out of the question. In other words, I'm riding a motorbike with a heavy backpack on, with no helmet, on streets with almost no traffic control, in a country with a sub-par hospital system. Sorry, Amara.
It was worth it, though. We got some great stuff around the city, including at an open-air market that was definitely of the locals-only flavor. Then, we got on the highway leading south out of the city toward Da Nang. After a few km's we turned off the main road, drove through a thin facade of stores and houses, and were almost instantly out in the rice fields. We rode the bikes along this 4'-wide dike between the paddies. (If you've ever been out in midwest or southwest farm country, these dikes are a little like the dirt road grids out there, except they're much smaller and made for two-wheel/two-foot transport only.) We decided to ride all the way to the other side, where we saw a farm village in the distance, and then double back to pick up the scenes in the fields that looked the most promising. But when we got to the village, we realized it was like one of those I described in my last post, a farm village that has no full-size roads in, and is therefore entirely absent of westerners. The village had a river running down the center and a concrete bridge across the river. There were people fishing and bathing in the river, and we got some great shots of this little hideaway. The sight of two tall white men with cameras, as you can imagine, created a bit of a spectacle, but no one seemed to mind, and the kids were hilarious. Everyone seemed to find it amusing to have the camera pointed at them, although several of the shots are way too posey to actually use.
After leaving the village we went back across the dike (which was a little over a km long) and stopped twice to get some shots. Alas, no one was working with a water buffalo, so that shot still eludes us. However, we got lots of other good "rice work" footage and a few shots of something pretty odd. These paddies have lots of little canals between them to use to flood the paddies or pump water out of them. The farmers also use the canals to farm small fish as well (smart, right?). There were two people in a small boat who, at first, looked like they were netting fish in a small net on the end of a pole and then dumping them in the boat. But there were three or four car batteries in the boat hooked up in series. We couldn't figure out why until we saw a wire leading from the batteries down the pole to the "net," which was really a wire mesh basket. In case you haven't figured it out by now, the man was electrocuting the fish. And there was a creepy buzz every time he stuck it in the water. Sure makes it easier to catch the fish!
When we finally returned to the hotel, I realized that I had a problem. I had put on sunscreen, but when I did so I hadn't considered that my shorts would ride up when seated, and I hadn't put any on my lower thighs. So my lower thighs and knees had been in direct sunlight for several hours. Although the area of the burn is relatively small, this is definitely the worst I've been burned in a VERY long time. I'm writing this about 48 hours later, and they're still bright pink. I'm surprised they haven't blistered. Sort of puts a downer on going to the beach here in Da Nang.
Another interesting little tidbit of VN information comes from a trip Matt took a few days earlier. It's too complicated to try to explain why, but on Friday he took a car to Da Nang from Hue and back again. The driver spoke very good English, and Matt had an interesting converstation with him. At one point, Matt told him how some people back home were a little worried about us coming here because they assumed that the people here would hate Americans. The driver, in what has to be one of the best lines heard on this trip, replied, "We don't hate Americans. We look to the future, not the past. We hate the Chinese."
Yesterday (Monday, the 4th) we took the three hour bus ride from Hue to Da Nang. Most of the people on the bus were westerners, but, as on the DMZ Tour bus, there were few Americans. Most of them were Aussies, English, or Irish. There was one woman in her mid-twenties who just wouldn't shut up the whole trip. She was speaking very loudly and ceaselessly to everyone within 10 feet of her in a thick Manchester working-class accent. I don't care how much you like My Fair Lady, that much cockney, for that long and that loud, is just damn annoying!
Half way through the ride, we stopped for toilet (that is, "toilet") and drinks. The people getting off the bus were instantly acosted by people selling tchotchkes. And one local lady had a ripped $20 bill she was trying to exchange for VND. At first this seemed pretty reasonable. We've noted on a few occassions that if a US bill has even a relatively small tear in it, vendors and even banks won't take it. I don't know why, but a ripped US bill is basically useless here. So it's not, on the face of it, so suspicious that this woman would want to try to trade this bill to some westerners. Matt, always the capitalist, was going to offer her 200,000 VND for it, which is about $12.50, but when he took a look at it, he realized it was couterfeit. When he told her he thought it was counterfeit, she got very upset at him. It was pretty funny, because her reaction was of the methinks-thou-dost-protest-too-much type; she was definitely running a scam.
As we were getting back on the bus, I asked for a cold Huda beer. Huda is one of two beers brewed in Hue, and it's pretty good, not to mention criminally cheap. I paid my money and waited, but they didn't have a cold one, so they offered me a 333, which is a Hanoi beer. They wanted 3000 more for it, but I didn't have any more small bills (it takes some getting used to to think of 2000 or 5000 notes as "small bills"), so I just asked for my money back. At that point they just let me take the 333 for no extra charge. But here's the thing, according to all the travel guides, 333 has formaldahyde it in. If you get drunk on it, you'll get very sick. Thanks goodness I only had one. (Sorry again, Amara.)
When we arrived in Da Nang, we found a hotel on the beach, which cost, per night, only a little more than the hotel in Hue..."really cheap" as opposed to "dirt cheap." It's right across from the beach, and all our rooms look out over the ocean. In fact, it's a lot like the beachfront strip in Virginia Beach, only a little shabbier. We're here until tomorrow, when we set off for Hoi An.
Da Nang is a tourist town, but most of the tourists are domestic. This is where the Vietnamese come for their beach holidays. So the tourism trade here caters much less to westerners than in Hanoi or Hue. For example, right next to our hotel is a big restaurant that clearly gets its business from the nearby hotels. But whereas most of the other restaurants we've been frequenting were catering almost entirely to western tourists, this one had only one other table with westerners at it and no English on the menu. This made ordering a little bit of a challenge, but, as always, Lan was happy to rescue us. I went back to the hotel and made a short night of it, but some of the ladies went later on to another restaurant just to hang out. This one made a stab at an English menu, but as we find so often here, the translations and misspellings can be unintentionally humorous. At this place, they tell me, an item that was clearly supposed to be steamed crab was listed on the menu as "steaming crap." A few others that stand out in my mind:
1. At the Ho Chi Minh museum in Hanoi, there's a locker area to stow your things with a sign that reads, "Take luggage of foreigners, no charge."
2. At one of the restaurants in Hue, a sign for a tourism company bragged about their roomy busses that would, "comfort many-legged foreigners."
3. A cute little boy seen on the street in Hue wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a puppy and the words, "I like dog." I wanted to ask him if he prefered grilled or fried, but I just don't have the Vietnamese for something that complicated.
That's about as good a place to end it as I can think of. I'll try to make another post soon, or, as a sign in Vietnam might say, "Will effort to make blogpose very qwik."
Stu
My title refers to an adventure Matt and I had on Sunday. We rented a couple of motorbikes and went looking for footage of city and country life. This is what's called B-roll, illustrative shots that may or may not be used in the film but which are nice to have if you find you need them. Since the OGCDC is in Hue, we needed some footage of life around the city. We also wanted some more farming footage, despite my little run-in with that cow.
So, we rented bikes from the hotel at $1 USD/hour, threw the camera in Matt's bag and the tripod in mine and set off. Now, the motorbikes in question are more like amped up mopeds. Matt kept jokingly referring to his as a hog, but these things don't exactly scream "Easy Rider." They're pretty much the same thing you see all over the place in Europe. Also, virtually no one here wears a helmet, so renting one of those was out of the question. In other words, I'm riding a motorbike with a heavy backpack on, with no helmet, on streets with almost no traffic control, in a country with a sub-par hospital system. Sorry, Amara.
It was worth it, though. We got some great stuff around the city, including at an open-air market that was definitely of the locals-only flavor. Then, we got on the highway leading south out of the city toward Da Nang. After a few km's we turned off the main road, drove through a thin facade of stores and houses, and were almost instantly out in the rice fields. We rode the bikes along this 4'-wide dike between the paddies. (If you've ever been out in midwest or southwest farm country, these dikes are a little like the dirt road grids out there, except they're much smaller and made for two-wheel/two-foot transport only.) We decided to ride all the way to the other side, where we saw a farm village in the distance, and then double back to pick up the scenes in the fields that looked the most promising. But when we got to the village, we realized it was like one of those I described in my last post, a farm village that has no full-size roads in, and is therefore entirely absent of westerners. The village had a river running down the center and a concrete bridge across the river. There were people fishing and bathing in the river, and we got some great shots of this little hideaway. The sight of two tall white men with cameras, as you can imagine, created a bit of a spectacle, but no one seemed to mind, and the kids were hilarious. Everyone seemed to find it amusing to have the camera pointed at them, although several of the shots are way too posey to actually use.
After leaving the village we went back across the dike (which was a little over a km long) and stopped twice to get some shots. Alas, no one was working with a water buffalo, so that shot still eludes us. However, we got lots of other good "rice work" footage and a few shots of something pretty odd. These paddies have lots of little canals between them to use to flood the paddies or pump water out of them. The farmers also use the canals to farm small fish as well (smart, right?). There were two people in a small boat who, at first, looked like they were netting fish in a small net on the end of a pole and then dumping them in the boat. But there were three or four car batteries in the boat hooked up in series. We couldn't figure out why until we saw a wire leading from the batteries down the pole to the "net," which was really a wire mesh basket. In case you haven't figured it out by now, the man was electrocuting the fish. And there was a creepy buzz every time he stuck it in the water. Sure makes it easier to catch the fish!
When we finally returned to the hotel, I realized that I had a problem. I had put on sunscreen, but when I did so I hadn't considered that my shorts would ride up when seated, and I hadn't put any on my lower thighs. So my lower thighs and knees had been in direct sunlight for several hours. Although the area of the burn is relatively small, this is definitely the worst I've been burned in a VERY long time. I'm writing this about 48 hours later, and they're still bright pink. I'm surprised they haven't blistered. Sort of puts a downer on going to the beach here in Da Nang.
Another interesting little tidbit of VN information comes from a trip Matt took a few days earlier. It's too complicated to try to explain why, but on Friday he took a car to Da Nang from Hue and back again. The driver spoke very good English, and Matt had an interesting converstation with him. At one point, Matt told him how some people back home were a little worried about us coming here because they assumed that the people here would hate Americans. The driver, in what has to be one of the best lines heard on this trip, replied, "We don't hate Americans. We look to the future, not the past. We hate the Chinese."
Yesterday (Monday, the 4th) we took the three hour bus ride from Hue to Da Nang. Most of the people on the bus were westerners, but, as on the DMZ Tour bus, there were few Americans. Most of them were Aussies, English, or Irish. There was one woman in her mid-twenties who just wouldn't shut up the whole trip. She was speaking very loudly and ceaselessly to everyone within 10 feet of her in a thick Manchester working-class accent. I don't care how much you like My Fair Lady, that much cockney, for that long and that loud, is just damn annoying!
Half way through the ride, we stopped for toilet (that is, "toilet") and drinks. The people getting off the bus were instantly acosted by people selling tchotchkes. And one local lady had a ripped $20 bill she was trying to exchange for VND. At first this seemed pretty reasonable. We've noted on a few occassions that if a US bill has even a relatively small tear in it, vendors and even banks won't take it. I don't know why, but a ripped US bill is basically useless here. So it's not, on the face of it, so suspicious that this woman would want to try to trade this bill to some westerners. Matt, always the capitalist, was going to offer her 200,000 VND for it, which is about $12.50, but when he took a look at it, he realized it was couterfeit. When he told her he thought it was counterfeit, she got very upset at him. It was pretty funny, because her reaction was of the methinks-thou-dost-protest-too-much type; she was definitely running a scam.
As we were getting back on the bus, I asked for a cold Huda beer. Huda is one of two beers brewed in Hue, and it's pretty good, not to mention criminally cheap. I paid my money and waited, but they didn't have a cold one, so they offered me a 333, which is a Hanoi beer. They wanted 3000 more for it, but I didn't have any more small bills (it takes some getting used to to think of 2000 or 5000 notes as "small bills"), so I just asked for my money back. At that point they just let me take the 333 for no extra charge. But here's the thing, according to all the travel guides, 333 has formaldahyde it in. If you get drunk on it, you'll get very sick. Thanks goodness I only had one. (Sorry again, Amara.)
When we arrived in Da Nang, we found a hotel on the beach, which cost, per night, only a little more than the hotel in Hue..."really cheap" as opposed to "dirt cheap." It's right across from the beach, and all our rooms look out over the ocean. In fact, it's a lot like the beachfront strip in Virginia Beach, only a little shabbier. We're here until tomorrow, when we set off for Hoi An.
Da Nang is a tourist town, but most of the tourists are domestic. This is where the Vietnamese come for their beach holidays. So the tourism trade here caters much less to westerners than in Hanoi or Hue. For example, right next to our hotel is a big restaurant that clearly gets its business from the nearby hotels. But whereas most of the other restaurants we've been frequenting were catering almost entirely to western tourists, this one had only one other table with westerners at it and no English on the menu. This made ordering a little bit of a challenge, but, as always, Lan was happy to rescue us. I went back to the hotel and made a short night of it, but some of the ladies went later on to another restaurant just to hang out. This one made a stab at an English menu, but as we find so often here, the translations and misspellings can be unintentionally humorous. At this place, they tell me, an item that was clearly supposed to be steamed crab was listed on the menu as "steaming crap." A few others that stand out in my mind:
1. At the Ho Chi Minh museum in Hanoi, there's a locker area to stow your things with a sign that reads, "Take luggage of foreigners, no charge."
2. At one of the restaurants in Hue, a sign for a tourism company bragged about their roomy busses that would, "comfort many-legged foreigners."
3. A cute little boy seen on the street in Hue wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a puppy and the words, "I like dog." I wanted to ask him if he prefered grilled or fried, but I just don't have the Vietnamese for something that complicated.
That's about as good a place to end it as I can think of. I'll try to make another post soon, or, as a sign in Vietnam might say, "Will effort to make blogpose very qwik."
Stu
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