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M-P & M-A, Viet Cong extraordinaire!
Aug. 9th, 2002 08:56 pmToday, I discovered that I'm larger than the average Viet Cong fighter. But more on that later, I now have two days to fill you in on.
To begin with, the reason that I didn't write yesterday is that M-P and I are so pathetic that we were fast asleep at 6:30. I kid you not. We did wake up an hour later, but we were so exhausted that we decided to not even go out for supper. We watched a bit of tv, a Chinese soap opera dubbed into Vietnamese. Amusingly, the whole dub job was done by one woman, and it wasn't even a real dub, it was a voice-over, so I could occasionally make out some of the original Mandarin dialogue.
What exhausted us so, you ask? Well, the night before yesterday, after having firmly resolved to stop buying clothes, we went out and ordered dresses tailor-made for us... *winces* (But we picked them up earlier this evening, and they're very, very lovely, so I don't care about the extra weight!) That done, we went back to our hotel and moaned about how we were spending our money too fast, how we wouldn't have enough to last us our whole trip, etc. etc.
Yesterday morning, we woke up bright and early and headed down to the travel agency for our tour. Apparently, nobody else had signed up for that particular tour, because the girl took us around the corner to another tour office that offers pretty much the same tour (they all do, really), so we had to wait a while.
The tour took us around the city to Reunification Palace, the Emperor of Jade Pagoda, a couple of other temples/pagodas, a huge wholesale market
The highlight of the tour, however, was our guide, Khoan. He was seriously the cutest thing I have ever seen; M-P and I wanted to kidnap him and bring him home for A-L, but he wouldn't have fit in our backpacks (not because he's big, but because our bags are full). In his fifties, with a kindly face, and short. I mean really short. He was wearing platform sandals and he was still tiny. Kind of like a Vietnamese hobbit. And his accent was absolutely adorable - I just wish I'd had a tape recorder with me to tape him saying "Mister Tiger" and "chicken market". KA-WA-IIII!!!
We got back to our hotel a bit after 6, and we didn't leave our room until this morning.
This morning saw us up bright and early again, this time to go to the Cao Dai temple and to the Cu Chi tunnels. On our way to the travel agency, the funniest thing happened: a little old lady, with her conical hat, started crossing the street at the same time as us. I was going to offer to help her, but when she took my arm, I realised that *she* was helping *us*, waving me forward when it was safe. *laughs* Did we really look that helpless? I thought we were getting pretty good at dodging HCMC traffic!
Cao Dai is a Vietnamese combo religion of sorts. Started in 1926, it combines elements of all the major religions plus spiritualism and things like nature and ancestor worship, I believe. It considers Victor Hugo, Lao-Tsu, Descartes and many others to be prophets, and has 3 million followers in Vietnam. Quite interesting, especially the fact that the higher-ranking people wear a certain colour to symbolize what religion/function they represent: yellow for Confucianism/financial matters, red for Christianity/recruiting, etc.
Their temples, to be honest, are very tacky. A fascinating mish-mash, to be sure, but the pink columns were a bit much.
After that, we stopped for lunch before going to the Cu Chi tunnels. These tunnels form a 200km-long network underneath the area of Cu Chi village, and were used during the wars against the French (they began as individual hiding holes, and eventually were connected) and the Americans. There are trenches, bunkers, tunnels, underground rooms of all sorts, bomb craters, a leftover tank, and the country's only shooting range.
At the beginning of the tour, you're shown a secret entrance to the tunnels. It's a hole in the ground, covered by a wooden trapdoor, and it's about 18 X 12 inches. I went in, and my hips barely slipped through. When I tried to pull myself out again (I was in up to my chest) I couldn't get enough leverage to heave myself up, it was too narrow to jump. So the nice soldier who was *WAII! at this very moment, there's an adorable little green and yellow lizard crawling across the ceiling above me!* leading our group around had to pull me out. I guess I'm not Viet Cong material, at least not without a starvation diet.
Another part of the tour lets you crawl through 60m of the actual tunnels, which are 60 X 80 cm. Not for the claustrophobic or the faint of heart! It was just high enough for me to waddle through them, doubled over, but M-P had to crawl most of the way. Since there's so little air circulation that you're completely soaked with sweat when you reach the other end. And to think that people spend hours, even days on end there when they were hiding!
We were also shown various booby traps, and underground kitchen, weapons and ammo. After that, we took the bus back to HCMC, rather exhausted. The drive through the countyside (which I forgot to mention earlier) was very interesting; this is what comes to mind when you think of Vietnam. The rice paddies, water buffalo, zebus, coconut palms and all sorts of mysterious vegetation, people carrying huge loads of all sorts of things on bicycles or carts, and a national highway that certainly doesn't seem to be of national width by any standards.
And now, a few things I noticed around Ho Chi Minh City.
There are hardly any street signs here, as there are hardly any traffic lights or even traffic laws (or so it seems). The lack of signs doesn't matter, though, because every single shop has its address, complete with phone number, on its sign. And *everybody* has a shope here, so you can hardly walk ten paces without knowing exactly where you are.
Because having white skin is considered beautiful, women here like to cover up during the day. To this end, they wear long gloves, hats and masks or scarves over their faces. Often you see a woman on a motorbike, wearing an ao dai, with gloves up to her elbows, a hat pulled firmly down over her forehead and a scarf tied over her face. I call them ao dai bandits; they look ready to commit armed robbery! Though the scarf does serve another purpose, namely to help them breathe. Lots of people wear surgical masks (cute ones with colourful designs) when on motorbikes to help them breathe.
Also, the water here may not be good to drink, but it does nice things to my hair. Too bad the humidity makes it poof up and curl as soon as I step outside.
For those of you still reading, a brief outline of our plans for the next little while.
Tomorrow morning we leave for a 2-day tour of the Mekong Delta, after which we take a boat to Phu Quoc island, which looks like it has gorgeous beaches. After that, we come back to HCMC to catch a bus to Phnom Penh, because we decided that since we're here, we might as well see Cambodia's famous wats. We'll hopefully be able to catch a flight from Siem Reap to Hanoi, then change our return date (don't know for when, yet), get a visa extension and meander our way down Vietnam and back to HCMC, where we will buy many more clothes.
*pauses to catch her breath*
M-P has nothing to say, so that's all for now.
To begin with, the reason that I didn't write yesterday is that M-P and I are so pathetic that we were fast asleep at 6:30. I kid you not. We did wake up an hour later, but we were so exhausted that we decided to not even go out for supper. We watched a bit of tv, a Chinese soap opera dubbed into Vietnamese. Amusingly, the whole dub job was done by one woman, and it wasn't even a real dub, it was a voice-over, so I could occasionally make out some of the original Mandarin dialogue.
What exhausted us so, you ask? Well, the night before yesterday, after having firmly resolved to stop buying clothes, we went out and ordered dresses tailor-made for us... *winces* (But we picked them up earlier this evening, and they're very, very lovely, so I don't care about the extra weight!) That done, we went back to our hotel and moaned about how we were spending our money too fast, how we wouldn't have enough to last us our whole trip, etc. etc.
Yesterday morning, we woke up bright and early and headed down to the travel agency for our tour. Apparently, nobody else had signed up for that particular tour, because the girl took us around the corner to another tour office that offers pretty much the same tour (they all do, really), so we had to wait a while.
The tour took us around the city to Reunification Palace, the Emperor of Jade Pagoda, a couple of other temples/pagodas, a huge wholesale market
The highlight of the tour, however, was our guide, Khoan. He was seriously the cutest thing I have ever seen; M-P and I wanted to kidnap him and bring him home for A-L, but he wouldn't have fit in our backpacks (not because he's big, but because our bags are full). In his fifties, with a kindly face, and short. I mean really short. He was wearing platform sandals and he was still tiny. Kind of like a Vietnamese hobbit. And his accent was absolutely adorable - I just wish I'd had a tape recorder with me to tape him saying "Mister Tiger" and "chicken market". KA-WA-IIII!!!
We got back to our hotel a bit after 6, and we didn't leave our room until this morning.
This morning saw us up bright and early again, this time to go to the Cao Dai temple and to the Cu Chi tunnels. On our way to the travel agency, the funniest thing happened: a little old lady, with her conical hat, started crossing the street at the same time as us. I was going to offer to help her, but when she took my arm, I realised that *she* was helping *us*, waving me forward when it was safe. *laughs* Did we really look that helpless? I thought we were getting pretty good at dodging HCMC traffic!
Cao Dai is a Vietnamese combo religion of sorts. Started in 1926, it combines elements of all the major religions plus spiritualism and things like nature and ancestor worship, I believe. It considers Victor Hugo, Lao-Tsu, Descartes and many others to be prophets, and has 3 million followers in Vietnam. Quite interesting, especially the fact that the higher-ranking people wear a certain colour to symbolize what religion/function they represent: yellow for Confucianism/financial matters, red for Christianity/recruiting, etc.
Their temples, to be honest, are very tacky. A fascinating mish-mash, to be sure, but the pink columns were a bit much.
After that, we stopped for lunch before going to the Cu Chi tunnels. These tunnels form a 200km-long network underneath the area of Cu Chi village, and were used during the wars against the French (they began as individual hiding holes, and eventually were connected) and the Americans. There are trenches, bunkers, tunnels, underground rooms of all sorts, bomb craters, a leftover tank, and the country's only shooting range.
At the beginning of the tour, you're shown a secret entrance to the tunnels. It's a hole in the ground, covered by a wooden trapdoor, and it's about 18 X 12 inches. I went in, and my hips barely slipped through. When I tried to pull myself out again (I was in up to my chest) I couldn't get enough leverage to heave myself up, it was too narrow to jump. So the nice soldier who was *WAII! at this very moment, there's an adorable little green and yellow lizard crawling across the ceiling above me!* leading our group around had to pull me out. I guess I'm not Viet Cong material, at least not without a starvation diet.
Another part of the tour lets you crawl through 60m of the actual tunnels, which are 60 X 80 cm. Not for the claustrophobic or the faint of heart! It was just high enough for me to waddle through them, doubled over, but M-P had to crawl most of the way. Since there's so little air circulation that you're completely soaked with sweat when you reach the other end. And to think that people spend hours, even days on end there when they were hiding!
We were also shown various booby traps, and underground kitchen, weapons and ammo. After that, we took the bus back to HCMC, rather exhausted. The drive through the countyside (which I forgot to mention earlier) was very interesting; this is what comes to mind when you think of Vietnam. The rice paddies, water buffalo, zebus, coconut palms and all sorts of mysterious vegetation, people carrying huge loads of all sorts of things on bicycles or carts, and a national highway that certainly doesn't seem to be of national width by any standards.
And now, a few things I noticed around Ho Chi Minh City.
There are hardly any street signs here, as there are hardly any traffic lights or even traffic laws (or so it seems). The lack of signs doesn't matter, though, because every single shop has its address, complete with phone number, on its sign. And *everybody* has a shope here, so you can hardly walk ten paces without knowing exactly where you are.
Because having white skin is considered beautiful, women here like to cover up during the day. To this end, they wear long gloves, hats and masks or scarves over their faces. Often you see a woman on a motorbike, wearing an ao dai, with gloves up to her elbows, a hat pulled firmly down over her forehead and a scarf tied over her face. I call them ao dai bandits; they look ready to commit armed robbery! Though the scarf does serve another purpose, namely to help them breathe. Lots of people wear surgical masks (cute ones with colourful designs) when on motorbikes to help them breathe.
Also, the water here may not be good to drink, but it does nice things to my hair. Too bad the humidity makes it poof up and curl as soon as I step outside.
For those of you still reading, a brief outline of our plans for the next little while.
Tomorrow morning we leave for a 2-day tour of the Mekong Delta, after which we take a boat to Phu Quoc island, which looks like it has gorgeous beaches. After that, we come back to HCMC to catch a bus to Phnom Penh, because we decided that since we're here, we might as well see Cambodia's famous wats. We'll hopefully be able to catch a flight from Siem Reap to Hanoi, then change our return date (don't know for when, yet), get a visa extension and meander our way down Vietnam and back to HCMC, where we will buy many more clothes.
*pauses to catch her breath*
M-P has nothing to say, so that's all for now.
