Winter Escape - Chapter 5

Vietnam

 

Back to our Past, but the Best Part is the Present

The authorities have banned ocean going ships from sailing up the Mekong, so we motored up the Saigon River instead to reach Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).  Much of our time here, we have spent trying to bridge the disconnect between the country that we last saw when we here 49 years ago and what it is now.  We have been happy to see that Vietnam has made great progress in modernizing the country.  Although the government is communist, capitalism is alive and well here and accounts for much of the relative affluence, especially in Ho Chi Minh.   We were amazed to find stores selling Rolex, Gucci, Ferragamo and more.  Skyscrapers and cranes pepper the landscape.  There’s even a sky tower like the one in Kuala Lumpur.

Night Skyline

Our first activity here was cooking school.  It was well organized, allowing us to cook a 4-course meal and eat it during the course of the afternoon.  The food was delicious and flavorful.  Whereas Thai cooking depends more on chilis and spiciness, Vietnamese food is flavored with herbs and just a bit of spice.  Some of these herbs looked like weeds in the market place, but when tasted and shown to us in a class setting, the flavors were fresh and lively.

 

Steamed Sea Bass in Banana Leaf

Next was a day spent in the Mekong delta.  Since the ship couldn’t go there, we spent 3 hours on a bus for a boat ride on the river and lunch.  The only thing notable about this excursion was that we drove through the city of Vinh Long, where Renee spent 7 ½ months working on the base there during the war.  I have no clue where the base was relative to the town; in those days Vinh Long was just a village on the Mekong.  Today, it is a busy city and appeared to be of some governmental (provincial) importance, judging by the number of official buildings.

 

Boat Hauling Rice Hulls on the Mekong

 

Life on the Mekong

 After the day in the Mekong delta, we disembarked the ship.  Just a few words about the so-called expedition.  Every day was met with changes, cancellations, delays and disappointments.  Lengthy bus trips were substituted for the itinerary to try to meet expectations of the passengers, only to make things worse, since most of us don’t travel on buses in groups .  Many of us felt that we were being held hostage!  At the end of the cruise, the expedition leader quit and walked off the ship.  He said he was tired of being beaten up by the guests.  We’re not sure where the breakdowns occurred, but it seemed that communication and coordination on every level was compromised.  The ship is continuing its itinerary, sailing off tomorrow for Hong Kong.  We wish the new passengers luck!

 

Lunch on the Mekong

Musician

 

Saigon – Ho Chi Minh City

The most poignant experience we had in the city was a tour of the War Remnants Museum.  It was very touching and notable that most visitors there were very quiet and subdued as they walked through the exhibits showing the horrors of the war. The worst of the worst were the Agent Orange exhibits.  Unfortunately, some of the younger generation in our country don’t know much about this period of our history.  We were trying to explain how we met to a young woman on the ship, and she likened our story to a movie she saw about Pearl Harbor.  She was surprised that it wasn’t the same war.  She was college educated and worked in a professional capacity.

 



Photos from the War Museum

 

Saigon Central Post Office Late 19th Century French Building (2 Photos)

Opera House, Also Late 19th Century French Architecture

Independence Palace

We’re now staying at a lovely Vietnamese hotel and enjoying the freedom of planning our days our way.  We have a couple more days before we fly to Hawaii, and we plan on enjoying that stay, too, as we put the ship behind us and carry on.

The Myst Dong Khoi Hotel

A Rapidly Growing City

 

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

The local people we have engaged for one reason or another in our hotel, at shops or restaurants, do not seem to show any animosity towards Americans.  They are warm, friendly, gracious and respectful.  The US Dollar for the most part is widely accepted.

Small motorcycles/scooters outnumber cars and are everywhere.  Fifty years ago, it was the bicycle that predominated.

On our last day, we took a taxi northeast of Saigon back to the area that used to be the base where we met 49 years ago.  The whole area is now an industrial park with lean-to cafes next to the street.  The taxi driver thought we were utterly mad when we asked him to stop at one of them to take our photo.  I guess he had a good story to tell his wife that night.

Winter Escape Chapter 4

 

Another Face of Cambodia

We sailed north through the Gulf of Thailand to Sihanoukville, Cambodia, the largest port in that country.  Upon arriving, we disembarked and boarded trains for a visit to the colonial city of Kampot.  Along the journey from the port, we experienced a totally different aspect of the country than the one we had seen in Siem Reap.  Gone were the glitzy 5 star hotels catering to the tourists visiting the ancient temples there.  Now, we were looking at poverty, shanties and trash strewn streets and countryside on the order of an extremely poor country. No more Lexus sedans and SUVs, but tuk-tuks ruled the day.  (A tuk-tuk is a motorcycle with a passenger cart attached used mainly as a taxi.)   However, it is obvious that no one appears to be hungry here.  Tropical fruits and vegetables are plentiful and most people have a few chickens and ducks.  They also seem relatively happy, maybe it’s a matter that they don’t know what they don’t have.  

Tuk-Tuk Parade





Street Food

Happy Children

The Kampot region was famous in the past for growing pepper, known as some of the best in the world.  During the time of terror when Pol Pot ruled the country (1975-79), he mostly had the pepper plantations destroyed.  They are now, however, making a comeback.  During our excursions in this region of Cambodia, much more emphasis was given to history concerning Pol Pot than when we visited Siem Reap.  There were many personal accounts of families torn apart, relatives starved, tortured or killed and finally, attempts to reunite families after he was deposed.    



Different Types of Pepper



Deep-fried Grasshoppers with Chilis



Jack Fruit

Cambodia is now supposed to be a democracy, but I had read a couple of days before returning to the country that the prime minister is a strong man who has taken over the media and is continually cracking down on his opposition.  After an afternoon on the beach at Koh Rong Island, we were scheduled to attend a classical dance performance known as “Apsara” on another nearby beach at dusk.  We personally decided not to attend due to the abundance of mosquitos that would be coming out of the jungle behind the beach at the same time as the performance.  But, we weren’t expecting to see the passengers who did go to the venue return before any performance could take place.  It turned out that an armed military group showed up wanting to see clearance and permission papers, even though everything had previously been approved.  Our expedition leader then brought everyone back to the ship out of an abundance of caution.  Antics like these will never bode well for tourism in a place that could really use the revenues that visitors bring.  Maybe it’s a good thing to have had this experience in order to get a more balanced view of Cambodia than just going to Siem Reap brought us.