Good MOOOOORNING, Vietnam!

03/04/12, 10:15 p.m.

                Well, this has certainly been the best weekend I’ve ever spent in Vietnam. I spent each day doing a different tour that took me a couple of hours or more away from the city, which lent itself to pretty scenery but fairly long days. My brain was having a new sensory information field day, and there were definitely a few unexpected surprises.

Yesterday, two other girls and I took a trip east to the Mekong Delta, where life drifts down the system of languid, murky rivers and canals. When we arrived, we got off the tour bus and onto a slow, wooden boat that sounded like a grumbling old man as it churned the lazy water of the Mekong River. We passed floating houses that act as stations for the fishing of catfish on our way to Phoenix Island, where we ate lunch and saw the process for making rice paper. When we hopped off the boat at the next island I was almost immediately handed a board laden with some honeycomb and lots of honeybees, much to my alarm. These little busybodies make the honey that we sampled in the form of honey-lemon tea (it seems like that would just be a hot toddy, but it was actually the most delicious and unique tea I’ve ever tasted) and a form of honey roasted peanuts. Next, we were taken by horse-cart dragged along by some tired little ponies to a village where we sampled produce like dragonfruit and a strange sort of citrus. While there, we were treated to live traditional Vietnamese music filled with pentatonic scales, local string instruments, and singers who use vibrato on consonants—like Broadway stars, actually.  I was just waiting for Yul Brynner to arrive. At the end of the concert, we were indignantly eating the untouched fruit off the other tables and wondering why there was a crowd over in the corner. Suddenly, a man was offering to let me hold a boa constrictor. Just like the motorbike ride, this was an offer I could not refuse. After being led grudgingly through a souvenir shop, we were able to take a ride on a rowboat pushed by a woman with a long oar. If God forbid I never make it to Italy and partake in a gondola ride, I think I’ll be set with this experience. It was so soothing as we passed through the lush palms and assorted tropical greenery, with the placid murmur of the oar pushing its way through the silt and water. Of course, as soon as we arrived back at our original boat and tipped the woman, on came the boat motors as she and the other rowers whirred away. To their credit, I guess I wouldn’t want to do that all day either. Our last stop was a coconut candy “factory” (some women with really deft hands under a thatched roof) to see how this Laffy Taffy-like candy is made. Only, unlike their Wonka sibling, the coconut candy is wrapped in the edible rice paper, so you don’t have to worry about unpeeling it! Why this has not caught on in America, I cannot say, but it seems like we would enjoy eating as much as we possibly can, including probably our own selves if it weren’t detrimental. After that, we got back on the boat and then on the tour bus. After vast stretches of verdant rice paddies dotted with the occasional conical rice hat gave way to increasing motorbikes and urban bustle, we arrived back in Ho Chi Mihn’s District 1 as true to the phrase “fat and happy” as possible.

As if we hadn’t been eating all day, we stopped by vegetarian restaurant for dinner that one of my friends had been meaning to try. I think the slogan of this place must be “don’t worry about it,” because it seemed as if we had walked in on the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Either that or they were messing with us because we were the only westerners in the entire (yet mostly empty) establishment. The spring rolls arrived with a plate of lettuce and basil sprigs that we didn’t know how to use, and I’m sure the staff was giggling as we said, “What the heck,” and wrapped the spring rolls in lettuce. I found goat on the menu and was confused by its presence in a vegetarian restaurant, but decided to order it since I’ve never eaten goat. It showed up tasting deliciously of an entirely mushroom dish without any trace of a billy goat or his gruff anywhere. Alright, makes sense. Yet, somehow my vegetarian friend’s vegetable dish ended up with bona fide meat in it, even though we confirmed with the waiter by pointing at the menu that no dishes had been switched. AND they charged me for the rice in a dish that said “with rice” on the menu, but it was just kind of an absurdly funny event. Nothing, after all, is ever certain or guaranteed when you’re traveling.

Today, Becky and I woke up early again and were back on a Sinh Tourist bus headed for the Cao Dai Temple and the Viet Cong’s famous Cu Chi tunnel system. Caodaism is a specifically Vietnamese religion that started in 1926 and was started because its founders observed that there are too many religions in the world that all say basically the same thing and yet everyone is constantly fighting because of them. My thoughts exactly! It mainly combines the tenets of Roman Catholicism, Buddhism, and Taoism, and saints include Jesus Christ and Buddha, as well as Joan of Arc, Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, and Winston Churchill. It fell into the callous grip of the government after 1975, but was finally given official sanction in 1997. The temple in Tay Ninh (close to the Cambodia border) is fantastically ornate with depictments of the Seeing Eye and dragons winding around pillars everywhere. We arrived in time for the noontide prayer, where hundreds of worshippers dressed in white sat in neat rows that put marching band to shame and bowed their heads and chanted to the molto largo metronome of a bell. I would have been spellbound if it weren’t for the rabid tourists who kept pushing to get their camera to the front, talking loudly during the prayer, and not letting worshippers through the crowd. I wanted to shake somebody’s shoulders but figured that probably wouldn’t go over to well in a temple.

After a lunch of pho at a local restaurant, we drove an hour and a half to the village of Cu Chi, home of the famed tunnels. During the American War, as it is called here, the people living there were sympathetic to the Viet Cong and ambushed American troops while living totally up to three or four bomb-proof levels underground. Schools, hospitals, marriage, and in fact all daily life was conducted down there, unbeknownst to the US soldiers above. Like at the War Remnants Museums, it was an interesting experience to sit through an old propaganda movie that described schoolgirls joining the voluntary forces, killing many enemy troops, and being lauded as “American Killer Heroes” for their bravery. As we walked around on top, we were able to see craters caused by B-52s, model reenactments of life in the belly of Cu Chi and a booby trap exhibit I like to call “How to Best Puncture a Dumb American,” and I was even able to wedge myself into a foxhole. Unfortunately, I left my fingers sticking out as I shut the lid, so I wouldn’t have made a very effective soldier. This point was confirmed when I got the chance to fire five bullets out of a carbine gun (yes, you read correctly!) and managed to hit the target only once or twice. What can I say, I’m no fighter. The moment we were all anticipating arrived when we started down into the actual tunnel system. The parts that tours go through have been widened for visitors, but only ever so slightly. I’m no NBA star and I had to crouch, crawl, or slide backwards the whole way. In that cramped, dark, airless environment, I forced bouts of claustrophobia out of my mind as almost all the other tourists gave up and peeled off at openings along the way. It’s just like Bright Child. You had your seventh birthday party in tunnels like this. 100 meters later, blessed daylight revealed a model of the hospital and the rest of my tour group. Living down there indefinitely with just bamboo shoots to the surface for air seems like an impossible feat to me. That just shows how resilient they were and how they had no other option, as the entire forest overhead was a noxious funeral pyre. While I also cannot begin to imagine the paralyzing and traumatizing fear American soldiers felt when confronted with an invisible enemy and the constant threat of booby traps, even the US had to agree that the plan was ingenious.

After such a literally breath-taking experience, we were back on the bus headed towards HCMC once more. Staring out the window, my imagination performed acrobatics trying to recreate what life here must have been like 40 years ago. This city and this country improved by immense strides, but there is still so far to go. So many are still haunted by the past—including those who weren’t even alive to see the turmoil, yet they still bear the memories of Agent Orange and leftover land mines in their disabilities. Entering that world begins tomorrow.