Good Afternoon Vietnam

On the second day in Vietnam, we left on a group tour to the Mekong Delta, about 4 hours south of Saigon. The bus ride was long but we had an interesting tour guide who made the first half of the trip fly by and was willing to let us sleep the rest of the way. The bus drove us first to the upper part of the delta and we took a tour of the water by boat. It was wonderfully breezy compared to the humid heat of the rest of Vietnam. After sailing for about an hour we stopped at a coconut candy factory. We were expecting to see a big industrial building, but instead the factory was a three man operation under a large tent that stood on the shore of the river. We watched the entire process from coconut to candy and then had the opportunity to try them ourselves. It was pouring rain by the time we left the candy “factory,” so getting back on the boas was a little bit scary. Luckily there wasn’t any lightning and the rain didn’t last long (in case you’re wondering why its been raining in pretty much all of these blog entries, it turns out its currently typhoon season in asia). We sailed from the factory to a pretty place to have lunch where we ate yummy fresh fruit and held snakes.

After spending the afternoon on the Delta we went into town for the evening, spent some time wandering the streets and then had a traditional Vietnamese dinner at a restaurant that was rented out especially for our big group. We tried to go to bed early because we had a 6 o’clock wake up call the next morning. My roommate and I ended up watching BBC news for a couple hours instead of sleeping because we’ve been completely news deprived and had no idea what was going on in the world.

After waking up at 6:00 (too early) and having breakfast at the hotel, we got back on the boats and went to the floating market in the Lower Mekong Delta. The floating market was amazing. Its all on water and people sell things things from their boats (which are also their houses). Every boat has a big tall pole on the front of it that advertises what they are selling (for example, the vegetable merchant has carrots and onions tied onto his pole). The market was fun, but it also felt slightly invasive to be touristing through these peoples lives and taking pictures of their stores/homes. After the market we toured a Cambodian –style Buddhist temple and then we hit the road for the 4 hour drive back north to Saigon.

The next day in Vietnam (today) I did a whole lot of things. I went to Catholic mass this morning with my friends (two of whom are catholic and the other 3 of us were just interested) and had fun listening to it in Vietnamese. Then we headed out to try and find the art museum. We never found the museum but instead found a memorial to a famous Vietnamese guy (not Ho Chi Minh) and then found a store that sold cheap knock-off movies that everyone but me was really interested in buying. We went from there to the marketplace and spent a few hours bartering for souvenirs (I’m getting pretty good at the haggling, though not as good as one of my friends who is hardcore about it and always gets the best deal). After that we had lunch that took about 2 hours from start to finish and wasn’t even that great until the chocolate cake for dessert.

After lunch we split up and I went with two of my friends to try and find the War Remnants Museum – a memorial to the Vietnam War that was supposed to be really interesting. We got a little lost and by the time we found a taxi who would take us there the place was closing in about fifteen minutes. We went in, saw some horrifying pictures, started to feel really sad, and then they kicked us out. I slipped on the wet steps on my way out and cracked my back on a stair. It hurt a lot and I’m pretty sure I’ll wake up to a lovely bruise in the morning.

I’m still not completely sure what I’m up to tomorrow. I may be heading north for part of the day to see the Cu Chi tunnels (used by the Vietcong during the war) and get better sense of the jungle-ness of this country or I’ll keep exploring Saigon and try and get back to the War museum. Not sure, but I’ll let you all know what happens, after it happens.