Ch. 1, vol. 1
10.28.9
Location: Vinh Long, Vietnam
Time: 3:35pm
Weather: Hot, humid, partly sunny
Welcome to my inaugural post. My intent here is not to agree with or contradict any of Nelly’s posts, but describe our travel experiences from another perspective. Observations from the road – more or less. I purposely have not read any of our posts to date so some information and experiences will probably be repeated.
HONG KONG:
As you know, we started in Hong Kong two weeks ago. Flew in on Cathay Pacific which is one of the greatest airlines on the planet. My best man was right (he possesses an astonishing wealth of airline travel information), they really have their ducks in a row. They’re polite, have great facilities, board and leave on time and know how to move a lot of people efficiently. Hong Kongers are funny like that – very efficient, not afraid to prod you to follow the efficiency routine but polite at the same time.
We noticed that HK is very Westernized. It’s a travel-friendly, user-friendly destination. Almost all signs are in English and Chinese, there’s intuitive signage and posted directions, it’s very clean, there’s a user-friendly subway (makes the EL look like an antiquated attempt on amateur night), well-established multi-mode public transportation system (that includes cable streetcars, buses, ferries, an extensive subway system and of course taxis) and not a ton of pushy peddlers on the street. From the main subway station on HK Island, you can even check your luggage with your airline so you don’t have to lug your bags to the ticket counter at the airport. Interestingly, all the taxis are the same. Every single one. Same make, same model, even looked like the same year. Remarkable. Neither one of us has ever seen anything like it.
Prices are similar to Chicago for everything from designer clothing to McDonald’s. We spent some time exploring Honk Kong Island our first day, shopped on Kowloon our second day and explored Lantau Island our third day. I’m sure Nelly gave you all the details. Constant walking and map-reading but we both agree that’s part of getting familiar with a foreign city. All types of food are available, but we tried to eat mostly local cuisine. It was amusing to see certain western venues full of westerners. While we tried to eat local, we didn’t go off the deep end with dried fish & seaweed and all that crap. Adventurous but not stupid. They said the water was okay to drink, but we didn’t chance it. We went the bottled route.
The hardest thing about visiting places where you shouldn’t drink the water is remembering not to rinse your toothbrush using the bathroom faucet. Neither one of us has done that yet but I fear it’s only a matter of time.
The weather in HK was hot and humid. The heat wasn’t oppressive, but the humidity was. There was constant haze. Freighters kept coming out of the haze. There are freight yards and unloading cranes everywhere. The population was so dense I think I’d go nuts in a month. Our hotel room felt like an oasis. High rises almost everywhere you look, even built into forested hillsides in places. Oddly, traffic didn’t seem as bad as Chicago. There are a lot of vehicles, but things keep moving. Oftentimes slow or stopped at lights, especially during rush hour, but it didn’t seem as pull-your-hair-out frustrating as Chi-town.
While there, we thought Hong Kong was a good place for a couple whities to start getting acclimated to Asia. And yes, I think I was one of the tallest people in the country. I constantly felt like I had to duck everywhere. Verdict: I’d feel quite comfortable in HK if I had to go back for any reason.
VIETNAM:
For those of you following along at home, you know that Hanoi, Vietnam was the next stop. Still hot, even more humid. Yesterday in Cu Chi, it rained while the sun was shining with little or no surrounding clouds. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. The moisture just dropped out of the air. It would’ve sucked to fight a war here because just walking around in the forest can be uncomfortably laborious, but more on that later.
One of our first and still surprising observations about Vietnam is the number of scooters everywhere. It’s funny and shocking at the same time. They outnumber cars at least 100:1. Some of the things they carry on their scooters I’m not sure I could fit in our pickup. They never stop either. They slow down, but never stop. Not for turns, traffic lights or pedestrians. Horns honk with annoying, relentless, headache-inducing consistency. Sometimes for no apparent reason. Crossing the street for the first full day seemed like a total gamble, like we were asking for injury. But what we found was that if you start crossing slowly into traffic and don’t stop or turn back, the scooters will swerve to miss you. Check out the video clip. It’s like that everywhere. Somehow, amidst the ebb & flow of scooter traffic, there no accidents. We only witnessed one wipeout and it appeared to be because the girl driving the scooter was not paying attention so she hit the brakes right behind us skidded a few feet and fell over. No major injuries or damage, but I think I may have crapped in my pants.
Vietnam, as a whole, seems to be a good 30-60 years behind the US in terms of commerce and infrastructure. Most likely because the really didn’t start to develop on their own until the late 1970’s after 100 years of French occupation followed by a resource-sucking war with the United States. That coupled with the fact that it is Socialist Republic (in layman’s terms I would say a loose communism) which, until recently, tightly ran commerce as well as politics.
The trip from Hanoi to Hue was an interesting flight. After two missed approaches the pilot decided to land in DaNang. We waited there for an hour while the weather cleared in Hue and flew back to Hue. There were some serious rains in that region, so water levels were very high and many fields were completely submerged. More hot & humid. We had a massage at the hotel that was fantastic. Lawman, you would’ve loved it. They stand on your back, grab a bar on the ceiling and dig in. It amazing that someone so small could really lay the hurt down. We hung out in Hue for a day, saw a couple things, shipped a box home with our new suits and took a bus to Hoi An.
The ride took a while, but went through beautiful hill country. If traffic didn’t seems so risky, it would’ve been a great tour by motorcycle. Shops everywhere in Hoi An. The markets are crazy with people and all kinds of things we couldn’t identify. Peddlers approach you from everywhere which gets old after a few minutes. Traffic was nothing like Hanoi. Our last morning in Hoi An we rode bicycles a couple miles to the beach. We both gained a new appreciation for the relentless honking. We were able to tell what kind of vehicle was trying to pass us by the sound of its horn.
Flew to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). HCMC traffic was like Hanoi, but with slightly less honking. We visited the Imperial War Museum our first day then traveled with scheduled tours to a fascinating temple, the Cu Chi tunnels and the Mekong Delta on days 2 and 3. The Cu Chi tunnels offered more war displays. The Cu Chi tunnel system was used by farming families in South Vietnam (just outside Saigon) that supported the North instead of the South. They fought in the jungle at night against US troops and hid during the day if they weren’t farming. It became difficult, if not impossible, for US troops to tell farm families from the Viet Cong (as the fighting farmers were called). The VC operated with no mercy towards the US, with women and children taking up arms and vicious booby traps scattered everywhere. Not having been there, I don’t have an exact feel for what it must’ve been like, but I can now see how the environment and circumstances could really demoralize troops that didn’t want to be there in the first place. I’m not trying to start a holy war here, but it seems that the US had no business being there in the first place. The usual “prevent communism” and “they have resources we want” (tin and tungsten, I believe). If troops felt like that in these oppressive conditions, I could understand if their hearts just weren’t in the game for no other reason than self-preservation. There is definitely a biased perspective presented in the war displays we viewed including the Hanoi Hilton prison, the Imperial War Museum and the Cu Chi tunnels. For example, there were pictures of US GI’s playing cards and volleyball while imprisoned at Hoa Lo (the infamous Hanoi Hilton), while earlier exhibits at the museum described the torture and cruel treatment of the Vietnamese in the same facility during the French occupation. Hmm… View these exhibits with a grain of salt.
Moving on, Vietnam seems to have little luxury. It’s a very simple society. They get by with almost nothing. Boats on the Mekong, Saigon, Red and other rivers are ancient wood contraptions with antique motors. If you gave a Vietnamese a piece of sting and a twig they could somehow build a boat and ship rice 100km upriver. I think I’m a relatively simple guy, but this population makes me feel very wasteful. I probably produce as much trash in one week as an entire Vietnamese family makes in at least a month. They waste nothing.
Vietnam Airlines isn’t too bad, really. It was at least as efficient as the US airlines and just as clean, if not cleaner. HCMC airport is very nice. Others are very basic, but you don’t have to wait long for your luggage. It’s usually just on the other side of the wall and thrown on the conveyor. They certainly have far less lost luggage than O’Hare.
Despite it’s seemingly simple existence, Vietnam has at least two things that are not widely instituted in the US, but should be. The first is an automatic escalator. It took us until we left to realize that most escalators (in the airport for example), do not operate until a motion detector at the base is actuated. We mostly took the stairs because we thought they just weren’t working. The second is countdown timers for traffic signals. They’re in the US for pedestrian crossings, but not for green or red lights that we’ve seen. That seemed very handy. No more racing to beat the yellow-to-red because the light changed unexpectedly. And yes, I may have been the tallest person in this county too. I hit my head 3 times on awning supports in Hoi An.
The Vietnamese seem very friendly towards westerners, but when it comes to $, there’s a lot of uncertainty that requires constant attention. Material goods can usually be negotiated, but it seemed that service providers would handily rip you off (by overcharging for a taxi ride, for example) if you weren’t paying attention.
The language can be a bit frustrating. It’s not latin-based so guessing what signs say is complete guesswork. It can also be annoying to listen to when someone with a shrill voice is speaking.
Street food was, uh, interesting. We mostly stayed away from it. We couldn’t identify most of it. In restaurants, some food was very good sometimes but questionable at others. Although I only had to run to the toilet once for an emergency purge, my gut was not my best friend for a substantial part of the trip. One night, it got us both. Street cafes are pretty funny. It’s nothing more than a propane burner with a big pot of something-or-other and several kindergarten-sized chairs around a 12” high table in the middle of the sidewalk. Street food is for iron stomachs only. We steered clear.
Verdict: We’re very glad we travelled through Vietnam. It gave a great perspective of yet another country in this world where things are vastly different from the US (or any western nation for that matter) and was endlessly interesting in that respect. I wouldn’t resist coming back here, but would have to question why I’d want to.
Travel notes to date:
We’re both really enjoying ourselves and are happy to have made the decision to travel in this capacity. Our carefully-selected gear is holding up well so far, though there is plenty of abuse coming up. We haven’t fried any electronics yet. We haven’t had any non-stomach illnesses yet. We’ve boiled water for teeth-brushing a few times and still stick to the bottled water routine. We’re not fed up with air travel yet, but we’ve only been on 9 of 28 flights. We got close to the end of our rope in Jakarta during a layover, but more notes on that to follow.
