Vietnam Wrapup

Wow, it's been over a month. Clearly I've been negligent. Why the sparse posting? There probably a couple reasons, but the biggest is my parents visit. When I travel with people, there's less down time which means there's less time to ruminate, less time to write and little interest in actually blogging. I have some fun stories from their visit (which ended about five days ago) and I'll try to come up with something in the next couple of days.

I'm currently in Bangkok, where I've been for the past couple of days waiting to get a visa from Burma- success! I thought I would make this time productive so I took a traditional Thai Massage course at Wat Pho. Five days and many many massages later, I now have a certificate claiming that I have some knowledge of Thai Massage. I need to keep practicing so if I'm in the area, I'm more than happy to get in some free practice (it's cool if you want to buy me a drink or something also though).

Vietnam seems like so long ago. I traveled there for about three weeks but I didn't leave with the strongest impression. I had a good time there, but of the five countries that I've visited so far on this trip, I found it the least interesting. I'm not saying that I wouldn't want to go back, but let's just say there are no immediate plans. The following is something that I wrote more than four weeks ago and never got around to inputting on the site. Let's just assume the narrative continues wherever I left off.

Delta, Delta, Delta
My travels got more interesting as I moved south into the Delta. Gone were the persistent tuts and motorcycles ladies constantly offering their services. In exchange, I got a much slower pace of life, endless dirt canals and a doubling of the mosquito population. A good trade off in my book.

For whatever reason, Vietnam never really struck y fancy. There were no incredible sites, compelling geography or terribly exciting adventures in my time there. I had a nice time, but so far it ranks the lowest my visited list. I enjoyed the Delta, the people were certainly friendly down here and I was happiest either on a boat, floating/zooming along canals or on a motorcycle trying my best not to fall off the bumpy dirt roads. It's funny, I spent an equal period of time in Japan and felt that I saw so much and was constantly intrigued by the culture. Nowhere near the same feeling here.

On my bus trip down to Can Tho I met a young English teacher keen on practicing with a native. Seeing how it was her home town, when she offered to walk me to a hotel, I jumped at the chance. The place was good value for the money and located in the center of town, rather than the small tourist district. Once again, I received the stares and status awarded to the awkwardly tall, hairy, traveler like myself.

Life is at a totally different speed in the Delta. While Can Tho is the regional capital, filled with motorbikes and coffee shops there really is not much happening here. Mostly shop owners sleeping in their stores. The attraction are the numerous canals and just sampling a bit of the life here. One of the oddities of an area filled with water are the floating markets, which take place on a daily basis. Farmers come from up and down the river to display their fruits, vegetables and other perishables. Since the waterways are more convenient to travel on than roads (lack of bridges makes this an obvious fact), it's faster to just meet somewhere in the middle of the river. I would find it weird to have your local grower physically bump his boat into yours and the market as a whole is a bit bizarre in general. Then again having melons floated over does sound kind of nice. These people live off the rivers/canals but they pollute them as if there are no consequences.

During the evenings, I was escorted around town by my new English teacher friend and two of her girlfriends. It was nice to get some local perspective and it's fun to hop on motorbikes of strangers and eat some random food. It added to the amusement that the combined weight of these three was likely below 300 pounds. Vietnamese women are quite dainty (apparently some 35% of VC were women) and I felt like quite the giant among these three.

Eat a Tire
The four of us went to eat on several evenings, and I had the fortune of being introduced to some local dishes. Ban Xao (sp?) literally means tire and it's like a do it yourself spring roll. An omelet like dish is prepared with meat, fish, and whatever else. This is to be wrapped between various leafy greens in your hand before dipping the roll into various sauces, fishy, soy, hot, whatever you want. The greens were all new and I wondered if the strong cinnamon flavor wasn't just some vestige of Agent Orange. The next night we had Vietnamese hotpot. Not bad, similar to other hotpots I've sampled in China, but it was great when I saw that to feed all four of us it cost about $4.

The food here has been so-so. Spring rolls and Pho Bo are definitely keepers. The pho is never quite the same in any two places. The broth is typically delicious , but I'm often disappointed with the noodles which seem to be of the store bought variety, and sometimes I don't want soup when it's over 30 c outside. I've come to really enjoy the slightly thicker meatier, Pho Bo Kho. the soups are usually pretty good, but I've had some not so pleasant encounters. Like when I ordered snails at a night market stand. I had three options, they each looked non discript, so I just chose one. It took some time to figure out exactly what it was that was in my soup. The grainy, sandy flavor isn't exactly a familiar one to me. The light bulb went off, when the the soup ladies started laughing hysterically and kept offering me more creepy crawlies. The Vietnamese will eat anything, and I have no doubt y snails were of the finest quality, surely scrapped from the bottom of their many 'clean' canals.

I could only chuckle when several days later I discovered that what I thought I ordered (grilled fish) turned out to be a plate of small unsightly clams. My misfortune turned to delight once I figured out how to eat the little suckers. It involved praying them open in the messiest way possible. Clearly, I'm getting a bit more adventurous, but every couple of days I hit a limit. Yesterday (like four weeks ago) on my snorkeling trip, one of the guides collected and subsequently served sea urchin. This was after they spent ample time, dethorning and scooping out the various muck that was deemed inedible. What was left was a dull, brown, goopy paste that resembled dog diarrhea. I gave it a pass this time, we'll see how I feel on my next encounter.

It's hard to mention Vietnam or any other place here in SE Asia without at least touchy on the women. The sexual relations out here are front in center both because of rampant prostitution and the presence of mixed raced couples. There's lots to say about this issue, I just want to briefly mention one of my experiences.

I spent my last couple days in Vietnam on Phu Quoc, a small island closer to Cambodia than the mainland. It was relaxing. I had a great day learning how to motorcycle on the deserted side of the island, alternating between open stretches of dirt road and mud puddles (too much fun). As I often do, I sought out the staff and tried to befriend them. There was a young woman (18? 19?) who worked at the resort who started acting very funny towards me in my last couple of days there. She would send nonsensical text messages, start blushing when I came around, it was kind of cute. I was happy to share her company for a couple of minutes and try to teach her some English, but in no way was I actually interested in her- she's just a kid, and was careful to set boundaries. She didn't actually know my name, and it was such a struggle to communicate with her in the most superficial way. How could she generate a legitimate interest? On my last day when I was leaving she looked as if she was about to start crying. She wanted to know when I was coming back, that I had an invitation to visit her village on the mainland, etc. It was if a love affair was ending, but the truth is we barely exchanged any words!

I don't mention this because I'm gloating that I won over the heart of some hapless 19 year old (it's not like it was a first), but to illustrate how ridiculous her feelings and expectations were. And that these feelings and expectations are the norm around here. Every time I see an interracial couple here, I can't help but think what they must talk about, and how much they actually know and understand each other.