Vietnam Part 2: Find a Wife, Build a House, Have Buffalo

On the afternoon of the 27th, we bade farewell to Con Dao and hopped on the slightly terrifying plane back to Ho Chi Minh City (read: sitting next to the propeller on a 15 row plane is not recommended or enjoyable). The next morning we woke up early and had an unbelievably gluttonous feast at the hotel's breakfast buffet with Mr and Mrs Thomas. Twas a cornucopia of deli meats (smoked salmon!) and fruit shakes (mango and ginger! who knew!) and bread (whole wheat/non-cotton-white-food!!). Following our morning feast, we headed to a tailor near the hotel where Steve and I got a shirt and dress made (respectively).

After impersonating Nic Cage and wondering whether our new silk duds would, in fact, be silk and wearable, we went on a historic tour of Saigon (as everyone there calls the city) which included a stop at Henry Cabot Lodge's house...

(L-R): tour guide whose English mainly comprised hysterical laughter, the man who currently owns/lives in Henry Cabot Lodge's cribs, the only two people in the picture who are happy to be there

Upon leaving Cabot's lodge (sorry, I couldn't help myself) we saw a man sharpening knives and...that was pretty cool.

Then we headed to the War Remnants Museum which was a terribly upsetting place. On the way to the museum, our tour guide announced the "three most important things for Vietnam Man" which were as follows in this order: find a wife, build a house and have buffalo. What I gathered from his elaboration on the last part was the buffalo are essentially the livestock of Vietnam with emphasis on the "life" part of "live." They provide the Vietnamese with a whole string of useful things such as meat, leather, transportation, musical instruments and carriers of all things portable. Just thought I should explain from where the title of this post is derived...now, folks, back to the museum. Outside of the museum are various aircrafts from the war, but the tourists drinking cans of 333 beer (Vietnamese version of Natty Ice) and smoking cigarettes certainly gave the entire place a nightmare-Disney-World-ish feel.

Inside the lobby the visitor is immediately confronted with many many photographs of infants affected by the aftermath of Agent Orange and jars of still-born babies with various physical deformities in formaldehyde. It is clear from the entrance of the museum how the Vietnamese see their own people's involvement in the war versus that of the Americans. There are far too many specifics to mention in this blog post, and I fear of confusing small facts, so I will skip over the rest of the museum's various exhibits except to say that, like most people whose histories have been tainted and devastated by war, the Vietnamese have constructed their own version of the war that is propagated by the Museum and by other similar historical monuments and structures in the city. As an American whose knowledge of the War and the US' involvement in the War is very much affected by not just history books but also the culture of the time, specifically the music. That sort of thing, that power that the culture had over dictating how we remember the War (I'm talking here about how the post-war generation is informed of and views the Vietnam War) is not apparent in Vietnam. In their mind, the war was a series of violent attacks on humanity and morality by the Americans and that is where it ends. Nothing in the museum mentioned the anti-war protests and lyrics of songs such as this Dylan one, "Let me ask you one question/Is your money that good/Will it buy you forgiveness/Do you think that it could." The focus of the Museum is on Americans but only on the Americans they wish to portray in light of their own country's history.

I should mention that the traffic in Ho Chi Minh City is unlike any that I have experienced anywhere in the world, aside from Bangkok but even that city's traffic has some order and adherence to stoplights and the general chaos can be chalked up to the confusing labyrinth of highways and crisscrossing roads. Ho Chi Minh City's traffic is simply nonsensical.

There are so many motorbikes going in so many different directions at slightly different angles and at slightly differing adherences to lanes that the getting anywhere takes at least an hour by motorized transportation. The following morning we headed to the morning market and our experience with traffic was rather terrifying, as evidenced by the picture above. It was pretty much the opposite of defensive driving.

"These hats are only for women," as we were later informed by our tour guide after he'd had a good ten minute laugh about it.

                      The market is a great place to go if you need a whole lot of plastic flip flops...

Or ten different kinds of fried bananas...

 Or are looking for that perfect peppercorn...

Or need clothes for your ghost (no joke, these are clothes for ghosts that visit people's houses)...

Or can't decide on a size or salty-ness of the infamous dried shrimp of Southeast Asia...

Or need the perfect home decoration, aka a golden frog that moves its arm up and down in a Jersey Shore fist-pump motion...

Or if you're really just craving the Vietnamese version of Williams-Sonoma.

The next night we flew to Hanoi where we had an eight hour layover at a hotel that provided us with delicious food and jazz music and a comfortable bed before waking up early on the morning of the 30th to drive to Halong Bay.

The four hour drive along the two-lane-turned-four-lane-by-complete-and-utter-lack-of-driving-rules-highway to Halong Bay was...terrifying to say the least. Trucks are under the belief that going 100 km/hour and honking a horn with fervor are grounds for passing a car despite the number or speed of oncoming cars. The scenery was, however, vibrantly green and many of the fields consist of rows and rows of variously textured green things and the effect is rather spectacular. It almost made up for the fact that our van was nearly smashed several times by the oncoming and/or passing traffic.

But then we arrived at Halong Bay and got on the boat that would be our home for the next day and it was well worth it...



After sitting down to some lunch we headed out on mini row boats to one of the many fishing villages housed within the mountains of Halong Bay.

  

We headed back to the boat just in time for sunset and a delicious meal of shrimp, pumpkin soup, spicy papaya salad (one of my favorite dishes now) and a surprisingly amazing mango mousse (usually that texture is just...well...repulsive to me).

That night we all fell asleep to the rocking of the boat and the salty air of the sea and were awoken at 7:30 by the captain of the vessel yelling at every room that the boats for the "Surprise Cave" were about to leave. I couldn't miss anything given the epithet "Surprise Cave" so I rolled out of bed and grabbed whatever sustenance I could find for I imagined a great many stairs and a great deal of climbing ahead of me. And I was right. The cave is located in one of the Bay's 1,600+ mountains and it offers some pretty spectacular views of the boats' sails in the morning sun.

I have not spent much time dwelling in the inner recesses of cavernous holes, but my impression of caves has always been one of dark, damp, claustrophobic places with ambiguous and musty smells and the possible presence of bats and/or bat feces. In short, I was not a huge enthusiast of caves. But the Surprise Cave erased and replaced everything concerned with my prior conception of all caves besides Batman's.

Oooooooo, I'm in a cave!!!

This cave was absolutely enormous and the ceiling (stalactites) looked like upside down sand dunes with dripping sandy icicles. Note the totally natural lighting...(not).

Back on the boat, we headed to the port and then back to Hanoi where we began our New Year's Eve with a water puppet show at a traditional theater near our hotel. After the show, we went back to the hotel to recuperate and shower (I still can't get over how amazing hot showers are after the months of cold water in my house) before dinner at a very delectable French restaurant called Verticale. And vertical it was...each floor of restaurant had about five or six tables and we were on the uppermost floor. As it was also the first time in about five months that I've worn heels, the experience was a bit wobbly. At midnight we headed to the roof of the hotel where everyone doused one another in confetti to the restaurant's background music of a song to an ABBA-esque tune whose lyrics consisted solely of "Happy New Year" repeated again and again and again and again.

On the morning of the 1st, we headed out for our day of touring Hanoi. After visiting the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, a terrifying piece of architecture in which we were allowed neither to have our hands in our pockets nor to speak. His body is preserved in something that has imbued his body and face with a sleep like quality and a glossy sheen (not sure what or how that is accomplished but I am content to remain ignorant). The white uniformed guards stand watch over the line and make sure there are no gaps in the constantly moving line of visitors, especially as they walk by the body itself. The experience was rather strange and was made even stranger when Steve and I were accosted by some Vietnamese teenagers outside of the mausoleum who wanted to take a picture with us with the mausoleum in the background. We all dutifully flashed the peace sign and as I walked away I had to wonder where that picture was going...two Americans, a bunch of teenaged Vietnamese girls and the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum. Interesting. We also went to a pagoda around the mausoleum where women are supposed to pray to the lotus flower for all sorts of womanly powers and awesomeness. So I prayed slash stood by the lotus flower pagoda and here is the picture to prove it.

After leaving the giggling girls we headed to the old French quarter where our tour guide took us to Anh Tuyet's house (a master chef in Vietnam) just to visit. Our tour guide (who endearingly referred to everything and everyone as "so beautiful" but also spoke absolutely perfect English) was a friend of the chef and wanted to introduce us to her. Upon entering her house, we were greeted by Anh and a tray of ginger tea (delicious) and four boxes of her Gold-Medal-in-Cookies-winning-coconut-cookies. Then she brought down crab spring rolls and a sort of fried fish dumpling that were both unbelievable (they also materialized out of nowhere, it's what I imagine the kitchen in Beauty and the Beast to be like).