The Forgotten Bag: Spring Break

Early on February 16th, we left for our Spring Break trip. Hope you enjoy!

Days 1 – 3 Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon:

The first thing you notice about HCM is how lively the place is – certainly compared to Singapore and the beach communities we had visited thus far. It is a city of seven million people, most of whom are racing around on scooters in a city with a handful of traffic lights. The way you cross the street, occasionally a five minute adventures, is as follows (we learned this watching women with children cross, the demographic we expected to be most risk adverse): take a step, stand firm, allow traffic patterns to adjust, repeat. We got the hang of it by the end except for one occasion where Julia, in a concerted effort to leave me a widower, got a little excited when only a few feet from the curb and took a leap of faith, causing a traffic raucous that would be newsworthy in Darien but merely part of everyday life in HCM.

The first day was spent exploring, simply in amazement of how loud the place was, all the power lines all over the place, all the markets and stalls, etc. Sensory overload. The second day we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels, an hour outside of town where the Viet Cong dug underground tunnels to hide from the “imperialist/devil” Americans. Like any site in Vietnam regarding the “American War”, it was ripe with propaganda. I do not know enough about the Vietnam War to have an intelligent opinion but I am willing to bet the views we were fed are pretty biased. Low on facts, high on gruesome outlier photos. The tour itself is about 10 minutes of very cool stuff spaced over 2 hours of touristy non-sense. We all were allowed to climb through a lit tunnel which was a pretty cool experience – maybe 3 feet high. Separately, a few of us (see pictures) were allowed to go in a true, untouched tunnel. It was pretty frightening – pitch black, I crawled army style on my stomach in the pitch black, holding onto the foot of the guy in front of me. Not for the claustrophobic.

We followed the tunnels with a visit to the War Museum which is just plain unsettling. I have made a goal to learn more about this War because I left that museum wanting to donate my life savings to civilian war victims. A must see though.

arrival in HCM City

getting a shave in the park

view from Reunification Palace

map room in Reunification Palace

the two pictures above were taken from the observation deck of this not-quite-finished building

motorbikes everywhere

our guide at the Cu Chi tunnels

checking it out

replacing the top

a booby-trap

bomb crater from a B52

us standing inside the crater for size comparison

inside the tunnel

bustling traffic in HCM City

Days 3 – 5 Hoi An:

This tiny beachside town is a Unesco World Heritage Site and was our favorite place in Vietnam and we will let the pictures speak for themselves. It is also the unofficial tailor capital of Vietnam. I bought five dress shirts (“uh, give me checkered shirts in green, blue, purple, yellow and orange”). Shirts are custom fit – a little snug but a good incentive to maintain my size. Julia got a jacket and dress made for her.

Favorite memory includes sitting on a bar porch overlooking the river, playing cards and drinking $0.25 local beer.

a little slower here in terms of traffic

our hotel

Ged at the tailor

selling candle lanterns to float on the river

Days 5 – 7 Hanoi:

Yikes. Let me first say that my classmates here all preferred Hanoi to HCM but I felt differently. Granted it was towards the end of our trip and the weather was depressing, but, it felt like Industrial-Revolution-London-meets-Flint, Michigan-meets-that-gross-Chinese-city-you’ve-never-heard-of-but-has-10-million-people-and-60-Minutes-does-a-special-on-how-the-pollution-is-causing-kids-to-grow-third-arms. The “Old Town” was pretty cool albeit very dirty. Streets just packed with little shops spewing their wares out onto the sidewalks. One had all of the electronic equipment you could want, another coffee and tea, another all carwashes for motorbikes … you get the drift.

Fortunately, we followed buses of tourists on a 3 hour trip northeast of the city to Halong Bay which, on contrast, is remarkable. Could and should be the set of a fantasy movie. It is also appealing to be named a new 7 Wonders of the World. We spent 24 hours on a boat, including a sleepover in a decent cabin and meals and visits to a fisherman’s village and caves. Pictures will speak for themselves.

fishing village

schoolhouse

our boat

We returned to Hanoi and did the Hanoi Hilton (of John McCain fame). The fact that it was a POW prison is largely overlooked – the focus is mostly on the French imprisoning the Vietnamese. The part about the POW’s makes the Hanoi Hilton seem like, well, a Hilton. If their description is true, 1970’s POW’s lived much better than 2011 backpackers (basketball games, Christmas trees, movie theaters, etc).

We finished with the Mausoleum, the resting place of Ho Chi Min (“Uncle Ho”). You literally get to see his body in a glass casket (no cameras). This was the first time I had ever seen a dead body. It was something.

One Pillar Pagoda

Mausoleum

Days 8 – 10 Luang Prabang, Laos:

Really cool place, another World Heritage Site. Clean, comfortable, safe – great food, friendly people, waterfalls, swimming holes, elephant rides and the monks. One of the coolest things is that the monks, who are everywhere, walk through town at 6am each morning to receive alms from locals (and now, unfortunately, tourists) who bring out big rice pots or crackers and hand them to the monks – like a big buffet line. Really interesting site to see in its natural form (i.e., with the locals). The tourists are pretty brutal though. It’s like that guy at the Plaza Hotel afternoon tea who wears a Cavaliers jersey and lets his kids play hide-and-seek amongst the chairs. Ruins the ambiance.

Ged woke up early the first morning and took the following series of pictures walking around town and through the market.

sunrise

morning in LP

morning market

rice drying to make "sticky rice" - a typical Laos dish

a tuk-tuk, the primary mode of transportation around LP

inside one of the wats (temples) in town

ceiling of one of the wats

street food

on our way to the waterfalls

guys waiting for the rope swing

sunset on the Mekong River

local woman waiting to give alms

Days 11 – 12 Vientiane & Kuala Lumpur:

Full disclosure, we traveled via VT and KL because it was the cheapest way to get back to Singapore. VT was an 18 hour stop, a throw away, but admittedly we didn’t give it a chance. I liked KL. The Petronas Towers are big. KL is like Singapore with an edge and far less expensive. While I was taking pictures of the towers, two Muslim women marched up to Julia giggling and took turns taking pictures with her. Any ideas why? We don’t know. They certainly didn’t speak English.