Vietnam

Hey friends and family!

I just got my temperature taken—36.5ºC which is perfect—so I’m allowed to enter Hong Kong tomorrow morning when we arrive at 8:00! I’m not sure what the temperature cut off is, but I imagine that at least a few of my unfortunate fellow shipmates are going to be quarantined and not allowed into China because there has been a cold going around the ship.

Though I’m preparing for Hong Kong tomorrow, I’m still recovering from Vietnam since we returned to the ship only three days ago. Vietnam is an extremely amazing place—probably my second favorite port so far after South Africa. It is definitely a country worth visiting. If Mauritius is the perfect vacation destination to lie on the beach and sip cocktails, Vietnam is the vacation spot to adventure and have great new experiences. The plane ticket around the world might cost an arm and a leg, but if you need a vacation to be active and encounter the unfamiliar while living, eating, and shopping like royalty for next to nothing, then Vietnam is your next stop.

So that’s Vietnam in a nutshell, but I’ll tell you a bit more about both my experiences and those of my friends.

The day after Tropical Storm Mirinae hit central Vietnam causing flooding that killed over a hundred, our ship traveled up the Saigon River to port in Ho Chi Minh City, which is still unofficially called Saigon. Saigon is a very lively city that retains a lot of its colonial French architecture, but also has a good number of contemporary tall buildings. It truly seemed like a modern city, definitely not a city that I’d expect to find in what we consider a “developing” nation. The prevalence of poverty is far less than what we've been seeing, and though still dirty by our standards the streets are quite clean. I even felt safe enough to chance drinking some iced tea which I'm sure was made with water from the local water supply.

Like always, the arrival of our ship full of mostly white Americans did not go unnoticed. In some bars there were signs that said “Welcome Semester at Sea” and several intelligent salesmen set up make-shift stores directly next to our ship. The Vietnamese people in the main parts of the cities are relatively used to seeing white Western tourists, but they still took no shame in staring at us as we did just about anything. Still, none of the Vietnamese are used to seeing black tourists. My friend Sam is a 6’4’’ black guy from Sudan (aka. he’s really dark) so the Vietnamese were all extremely fascinated with him. At first it was kind of funny; they would touch his skin and almost try to rub off his color or something, and every one of them with a camera phone would quickly snap a photo. Eventually though, I felt badly for Sam; I’m sure it got old being on display. And when I really thought about it, I sort of felt badly for the Vietnamese people—they are so ignorant to the diversity of the rest of the world, not that it is really by any fault of their own.

The main trip that I took while in Vietnam was a journey south of Ho Chi Minh City to the Mekong Delta region. The Mekong Delta region is the largest distributary in Southeast Asia as well as the second leading rice exporter in the world. This area is a maze of small rivers and canals that force the local community to focus their lives around the water entirely. The main mode of transportation is boat, markets are literally groups of boats that gather in a common water space, and any stores or communities that are not physically on the water are located directly next to a river.

On my trip we just experienced this whole lifestyle. The first night we stayed in a house on one of the hundreds of little islands in the delta. The house was literally built above the water—through our floorboards you could see the mangroves and water below. We slept in mosquito nets and saw leeches, we hiked around and gave candy to the local kids, and we helped make spring rolls for dinner and listened to a couple sing us Vietnamese folk songs. It was a quite unique, quite Vietnamese experience. The next day in the Delta region, we went from roughing it to first class living and spent the night in a very fancy hotel in Can Tho, the country’s fifth largest city. We saw two beautiful Cambodian Buddhist temples and spent a lot of our time eating absolutely amazing Vietnamese food [of which I have a newly found appreciation. I strongly suggest you find the Vietnamese restaurant nearest to you and give it a try].

While living it up in Can Tho, a few friends and I decided to get massages by blind Vietnamese people, which was quite an experience itself. For the three dollars it cost me it was worth the experience, but I’d take a traditional “American” massage over the all but soothing poking and pounding of a Vietnamese masseuse any day. My male friend that joined us girls for the morning massage was unfortunate enough to learn that the Vietnamese assume that all male foreigners want more than just a massage. Feeling quite violated, he used both words and hand signals to inform them he wanted “REAL massage.”

During my time in Vietnam I did my best to learn a few words in the local language; my favorite phrase to use was what sounds to us exactly like “come on you.” In Vietnamese it means “thank you very much” so it was one that I got to say often. Not only did we think it was entertaining to be constantly saying “come on you,” but for some reason the Vietnamese people absolutely loved it when we attempted to speak their language. They didn’t laugh at us, or I don’t think they did anyway, but I think they just thought it was cool we were trying—maybe they’re not used to us Westerners giving even a poor attempt to hide our ignorance—I’m not entirely sure. Regardless, we all had a good laugh every time I brought out one of the ten words in my Vietnamese vocabulary.

As for the many observations I thought I might have on Vietnam as a communist nation, there seemed to be very few obvious differences between it and democratic nations. Basically the Vietnamese have to be slightly careful of what they say on politics and alike, and they can’t gamble. Of course, this was all I saw as an outsider observing the daily life of the Vietnamese people. When I spoke with a young, educated Vietnamese man about the Communist Party he seemed to have mixed feelings. He was very proud of his country, as all Vietnamese people seem to be, but he felt as if his nation was stuck in a communist trap without any method for reform. I don’t believe that communism is an effective political or economic system, but it was still very interesting to hear about the concept from a wholly different source. Even though I grew up in a post-Cold War era, my generation was taught by those who experienced the Cold War and for that reason I’ve always been slightly skeptical of the objectivity of my teachers.

Most of my time in Vietnam I felt as if the nation seemed untouched by the Vietnam War or as they call it, the American War, that meant and still means so much to many Americans. Throughout their history the Vietnamese have had to fight off the imposing powers of the Chinese, the Khmers, the French, the Japanese, and the Americans so perhaps it was just another war in Vietnam’s long struggle for autonomy.

Still, I was very interested in this recent history so I made a trip out to the nearby Cu Chi Tunnels. In case you don’t know, the Cu Chi Tunnels are secret underground tunnels that spread throughout Vietnam and were an integral part of Viet Kong’s success in the American War. For a very long time the Americans were completely unaware of the underground network; soldiers would describe how the enemies would come out of nowhere and just as quickly disappear. In addition to crawling through some of these tiny tunnels we saw many disturbing booby-traps used by the North Vietnamese in the war and saw many huge craters, still present throughout the area, that were formed by B-52 bombs. Though it's depressing to reflect on past wars and losses in such a bustling, progressing place, I thought it was important and a day well spent.

Again, it’s very late the night before we arrive in our next port and I’m up blogging. I don’t know why I always do this to myself—lose sleep before I even get to the country. Luckily, the places we visit are exciting enough to wake me up and keep me up even when I am severely lacking in rest. Four hours from now I’ll be out on the sixth deck eating breakfast as we roll up to beautiful skyline of “the pearl of Asia.” I’m sure I’ll manage to get through the day.

I realized the other day that Hong Kong is the last of the three “city-states” in the world that I have yet to get to (the other two being the Vatican City and Monaco which I visited on my Europe excursion last summer). I’m starting to feel like a real world traveler now, but this feeling just makes me continually contemplate how I’m going to get to those many places I still have yet to see. …So if anyone is looking to vacation in South America this year, let me know!

Check back for my China blog in seven to ten days!

svc