Good Morning Vietnam!

After an extremely long 6 weeks of solid students, we boarded a plane for Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on Saturday, August 18^th.   Later that day, we took a second flight to Nha Trang, Vietnam; a coastal city on the eastern side of the country where we stayed for a week.  At least once a day I had the urge to yell, “Good morning Vietnam!” to no one in particular, and a few times I did. J 

NHA TRANG

I’m looking back at my journal to write this post and I feel a little nostalgic as I read about the paradise we experienced.  I wrote about sitting under a thatch umbrella, looking out over the turquoise water of the South China Sea, listening to the gentle waves and Russian.  (I’ll get to that later)  We spent most of our days enjoying being warm and relaxed with absolutely no agenda.  I read 3 books in 4 days and napped to my heart’s content.  The only thing that interrupted us was the steady parade of Vietnamese sellers.  Would we like water color paintings or fresh lobster?  Massages or bracelets?  Parasailing or snacks?  “Hello lovely, you want buy something?”  Regardless, the beach was glorious…and that’s where we parked ourselves for the majority of our trip!

fruit seller

At night for dinners, we met up with Andrew and Daphne, friends we work with.   We stayed loyal to a select few restaurants and my on my - they were delicious.  First of all, we ate at Texas BBQ and Steaks so many times that we got our picture taken for their wall!  We haven’t had good barbeque since we’ve been in Korea so it was a real treat for us. 

The owner, Wayne is from Memphis and makes a mean pulled pork sandwich.  We also tried Da Fernando’s, a great Italian restaurant; The Refuge, a French joint; and Same Same but Different Café.  We ate well in Vietnam.  After eating dinner, we usually walked around a few street markets, occasionally got some ice cream, but mostly just enjoyed the company of our friends. 

A side note: we learned that Russians make up 70% of the tourism in Vietnam so there were a TON of Russian tourists, Russian stores and Russian restaurants.  After the Vietnam War, when Northern Vietnam won, the Soviet Union (who had been backing them) helped rebuild the country.  There are now a number of direct flights from Russia to Vietnam and it was a beautiful beach, so I don’t blame them for coming!

Besides lounging in the sun, we also tried our hands at scuba-diving.  We had a 2 hour course in a pool to cover the basics one day and then we went out the next morning and did two 45-minute dives with a dive master.  It was incredible!  It was so neat to see sea life in its natural environment and even cooler that we could name a large number of them.  Luke and I had a saltwater aquarium in our apartment in Minnesota so we know a decent amount about coral and saltwater fish.  It was really cool to see monster-sized colonies of hard and soft corals and schools of brightly-colored fish.  11.2 meters at our deepest, we tried to mentally soak in everything.  Luke’s first words once on the surface were, “I’m hooked!”  We’re planning on diving again in the Philippines in October. 

On our last morning in Nha Trang, we woke up early to watch the sunrise.  We were expecting a quiet beach with few or no people.  Well, little did we know that 5:00am is the time that every Vietnamese person chooses to swim/exercise/lounge/stretch on the beach.  Who knew??

HO CHI MINH CITY (SAIGON)

We hit the ground running in HCMC.  We made up for all our lounging on the beach and walked EVERYWHERE.  We spent most of our time completely overwhelmed with the huge variety of knock-off products.  Luke bought a North Face jacket and I got a 70 liter backpack for a fifth of the price we would expect at home.  There were always more markets to explore and more vendors vying for our attention.  Everywhere we looked; there was something else we could buy for a great price.  So many colors, people, motorcycles, sellers; we were so over-stimulated, but it was a great time.  We walked around at least 15 different art galleries before we found an oil painting that we loved. 

Also while in HCMC, we took a tour of the Cu Chi tunnels, the tunnels that were used by the Vietcong soldiers during the Vietnam War.  There are 200 kilometers of tunnels under HCMC and US army bases.  We watched an introductory movie about the war and tunnels and let’s just say it was a little slanted.  It talked about Vietcong soldiers getting medals for killing the most American enemies and the video spoke of a number of torturous traps the Vietnamese soldiers created for the American; metal spikes and booby traps.  Oh, and a direct quote from the movie:

“Like a bunch of roadside devils, American soldiers shot women and children, chickens and ducks, and they even fired into the ground and at Buddha statues.”

 We as American tourists were quite a surprise to everyone we met and at that moment we understood.  They really don’t like us!  We sat in the back and hoped that no one could tell where we were from.  I know the US did some terrible things during the war, but I have never felt so hated. 

The Cu Chi tunnels were 3, 6 and even 8 meters underground!

Some people (me included) hid themselves in a small underground hiding place and others tried shooting AK47s, M16s and other big guns and rifles.  It was a little disconcerting hearing real machine guns going off around me in the jungle, and I have never been more thankful that I haven’t had to experience war firsthand.  We had the chance to go down into a section of tunnels and even though it was widened for tourists, it was still so cramped that we were the first ones to ditch after 20 meters.  We had to hunch over so low and still our backs hit the low ceilings…claustrophobia!!!

After our tour, we came back to our hotel and wandered around a little more.  The next day, we took a cycle tour of the city to see the Reunification Palace and the Jade Emperor Pagoda.  Motorcycles flowed past us quickly and cars honked furiously, but that seems to be the norm here: one hand on the horn and one hand on the wheel!  We had one last foot massage, split a smoothie to spend the last of our Vietnamese dong and then headed to the airport for our red-eye flight.  “Goodbye Vietnam!” ;)