Bygone Saigon

After two days of recovery for colds we had developed from general uncleanliness and no sleep, we left the room one evening to see a water puppet show (I went with some friends from Britain, Derek didn't come) and to visit the Ngoc Son Temple on Hoan Kiem Lake, where a giant turtle is "embalmed" but is not a very convincing specimen. The water puppet show was created in the Hanoi area in the 11th Century by rice farmers. The puppet masters control the figures by poles that run under water, and they stand behind a curtain to run the show. The stage is all on a square, lake-like surface. If you're in Vietnam, it's a must.

We took a flight the following day to Ho Chi Minh City, and on the way, we experienced attempted extortion by our cab driver, who tried to have us pay 1/4 the price of the already expensive drive as a reimbursement for "toll fees" that he had supposedly paid. We didn't pay it, but he was pissed.

Ho Chi Minh City, known still by the locals as Saigon, is a much more relaxed place than Hanoi despite its doubled population (7 million; Hanoi -3.7 million). On arrival, we met with a group from a global outreach for Habitat for Humanity and they gave us a free ride to downtown! We had lunch at Sozo, a Christian organization that trains street kids in Vietnam for culinary employment. The staff was friendly and the internet was free - we were in a good place. We found some excellent street food (Bun Cha) and an overpacked grocery store. Our room must have been 7 floors up. All the buildings in Vietnam are narrow and tall. The front is the width of a strip mall shop, but they build back and up as far as they can, so most of our rooms have been a painful climb.

We visited Reunification Palace, where we saw the digs the south Vietnam "President" was setting up for himself before the northern army brought a few Russian- and Chinese-made tanks through their front gate, ending the north-south conflict for Vietnam on 15 April, 1975. We enjoyed the underground bunkers and the old equipment, all frozen in time. They had tanks and a jet on display in the lawn, copies of the ones that had ruined the gate and bombed the building, respectively, and a US helicopter on the roof.

We walked to the War Remnants Museum, whose front lawn area was filled to the brim with US military equipment left behind (too bad - we could probably still use them) and had many pictures of people harmed by the war. The tone of the museum was decidedly propogandist - the US was an evil conquerer bent on destroying civilized humanity, wanting to rip Vietnam apart for its own purposes, against the wishes of all Vietnamese people. It was very tough to see, as an American, and the pictures themselves bespoke atrocities that should never have occurred, but the government-run museum certainly didn't post pictures of any of the atrocities that they were responsible for, so in the end, you left feeling sorry for the whole mess, and sad for anyone who fought, only to have their efforts later portrayed in such a poor light. Ah, well, such are the politics of war.

Insert - I'm sick of Asian TV. Whiney female voices, all of them, and cheesy karate films, which are entertaining as an accidental comedy, and not for their intended purposes.

We saw the Notre Dame Cathedral, where mass was being held. We ate at a posh, but very cheap, restaurant called Quan An Ngon where we enjoyed Bun Bo Nam Bo. We left the next morning on a two day trip to the Mekong Delta region. Our first stop was Mytho, where we saw a coconut candy "factory" (some machines, just as many people, but the assembly line concept was in effect), rode horribly broken-down bikes through the countryside, dodging donkey-pulled carts and trucks stuffed to the brim with chickens. In Ben Tre, we took a small boat paddled by an older woman in a rice hat through very narrow canals in the mangroves to a fruit orchard, where we sampled local fruits until overrun by bees.

We had honey tea (soooo good) and held a python at the bee farm, where I hid in plain sight from the swarm that didn't seem the least bit interested in anything but our drinks. A boat back to the bus which took us on to Cantho ended our first day. We met Michael and Marion Milch of France and dined with them on questionable chicken dishes on the water. It was a beautiful region, but the bus ride was violently bumpy as we crossed more bridges than there are characters in this message.