On the road again! Too be honest, none of us were going to miss Dalat too much. Our car picked us up at 10 and we spent the next 3 hours winding our way east out of the highlands to the coastal city of Nha Trang. For the first half hour or so, we passed endless rows of greenhouses. There were tens of thousands of them - where you would expect to see farms and fields, you would see white covered greenhouses stacked tightly together for miles and miles. We couldn't figure out if this was just to keep pests out, or something to do with rain. Breadbasket of Vietnam indeed!
The next couple of hours featured endless switchbacks as we were into the real mountains and making our way down slowly. It would have been awesome on a bike - and we did see a few bicycle tours. The roads were in great condition, and compared to the road from Saigon, this road was not very busy. There were some awesome views to be had - streams that fell down the steep cliff face and dropped hundreds of meters, soaring limestone cliffs, huge jungle covered valleys - quite beautiful. It's hard to imagine that this area would have been heavily bombed and scarred during the American war.
With about a half hour to go, we finally made it to flatter ground, where we were comforted to see our beloved emerald green rice paddies. Rice is life!
We were dropped off at our our hotels (one at each end of the strip), and we grabbed a quick bite and headed out for a walk.
The coastline here is beautiful. Similar to what we'd seen in Danang and Hoi An - never ending beach front with clear easy going ocean waves.
We walked to the other end of the main strip of Nha Trang. This is a fairly built up city (I would guess fourth biggest after Ho Chi Minh, Hanoi and Danang) and the waterfront is filled with international name brand high end hotels. There is also Russian advertising and writing everywhere! I guess this is a very popular place with Russians, as is Pukhet in Thailand according to Kylie. It's kind of weird to see Cryllic writing everywhere, but.... Why not?
We made it to the Mudford's hotel and the girls had a swim in the little pool on top of their hotel.
We then opted to head to the beach where the girls could do some body surfing while we enjoyed some local Belgian whites! There's a huge range of prices here - very local and cheap to very pricey and chic. We stayed in the south end and went to a small local place for dinner which was pretty good. I still enjoyed the food more in the north - it seemed healthier, fresher and more varied than in the south so far. I know I'm going on a relatively small sample of meals to base that on, but Beth agreed so now it's irrefutable!
After dinner, we all figured it was a good night to get to bed early as we had a full day surprise for the girls tomorrow(!). We did check out the tourist strips near the Mudford's place - I'm not sure why, but I was a little surprised at how happening the place was. There were a ton of neon lights, jazzy restaurants and clubs, ethnic foods like Indian, Armenian and Turkish to get the mouth watering even though we'd just eaten, and a boatload of people. There were lots of Russians too! Tomorrow, we have an early start. We are looking forward to it and not - the girls will have a great time tomorrow, but it's our last day with Kylie, Andrew, Ashlee and Sophie - they've been great company and fun to be around. We will have to list our new Tasmanian phrase book entries one of these blogs...
A rainy day! Luckily, we got out and got some excercise early. Of course, none of us could beat Kylie and Beth up in the morning - they got up early to do the 7km walk around the little man made lake here. After breakfast? We all did the same loop!
Dalat has been described as the Paris of Vietnam, or even "just like Oakville" (lol), but I would describe it more like Niagara Falls, or even Mt Abu in India. Dalat is a honeymoon destination for Vietnamese, and it shows. There are plenty of cheesy things to do (pedal powered lake swans anyone? Hello? Flower garden exhibit? Yeah... How about checking out the Crazy House?) and being 1500 meters above sea level it has quite moderate temperatures (it was maybe 24 degrees today).
It is known for its night market, which unfortunately we missed both nights because of the heavy rains. Dalat is really the breadbasket of Vietnam, as the surrounding area provides a ton of vegetables and fruits that aren't really grown anywhere else. Their fruit and vegetable markets look more like our produce sections back home.
Back to our walk, at one stop we became the ones being photographed as a literal mob came up and took pictures of the 8 Gaijinzilla!
We managed to miss the flower garden and the swans, as well as the horse ride and a dozen other things, but we did decide to walk up the hill to the Crazy House.
The crazy house was built by one of the children of a former president of Vietnam. I'm not sure where she studied architecture (Moscow) or what she had in mind, but this place is very weird. It's actually a 10 room hotel and her principal residence surrounded by weird concrete walkways and odd decorations.
The place was packed, so maybe she did know what she was doing. I do find a recurring trend here in Vietnam - nothing seems to be 100% complete. Part of the facade of one of the buildings was a skeleton of rebar and supporting brick, while they've started another project elsewhere onsite. Dalat is no different - there are buildings that are 80-90% complete everywhere you go.
Other than the very cool market area and perhaps the night market, the whole town seems like a giant government project where a whack of money was poured into the area, but nobody followed up to see how the project was going.
We spent a few hours after lunch walking the streets, ending up in several markets where we bought and sampled a ton of different snacks. I always like the real Vietnamese local markets - they are full of activity all through the day and really show how hard working the everyday people are here.
We chilled out in the late afternoon, getting together for some snacks, music and beer while the girls spent 3 hours filming a horror movie throughout the hotel. After dinner we had s viewing of the movie... It was so scary, I'm not sure I will be able to zzzzz...zzzz....zzzzz. ....zzzzz
Transfer day. We are on the move for the next five or six days, trying to get a sampling of southern Vietnam. Our van (bus? It holds 16 so the 8 of us had plenty of space and were quite comfortable) picked us up at 8:30 and we crawled out of the busy city.
I am constantly amazed at what people can carry on motos. This woman with a ton of fish and turtles seemed unique, until we passed another moto with just as many fish (probably on the way to Fish Store Street!).
There are "heeps" of sayings we remember from Kylie and Andrew, but one of the funniest was the name for caramel popcorn - "lolly gobble bliss bombs". Soon into the ride, they produced a bag to prove they hadn't been pulling our legs...
We were on the long road to Dalat today - a kind of modern hill station. When I say long, I mean time, not distance, as it is under 300km from Saigon. However, with the speed limits and sometimes congestion in towns, the travel time was more like 7 hours in the van, with an extra two and half hour detour halfway for lunch and to check out the Dambri Waterfalls.
Whoever built the Dambri Waterfall park had big plans - it is a pretty sizeable place filled with weird bronze status of animals and mermaids, derelict carnival rides, unused bungalows, iffy restaurants and souvernir shops (spelled as they spelled it). Maybe the entry fees turned tourists away - it was about 25US for each family which for the average Vietnamese family is a lot.
I have to say, the falls themselves were impressive, though we didn't have raincoats so didn't walk behind or under the falls.
There was another set of falls that we visited via riding a Blue Mountain-like ridge runner ride.
The falls below were beautiful!
Robin and Beth were paired up for the ride back to the top.
Andrew spotted a weird phenomenon on his trip to the Mekong delta - hilarious photos above the urinals meant to.... I don't know. Encourage you? Discourage you? A girl with a camera, magnifying glass, one with a measuring tape, one laughing. Classic. So we went for a bathroom break before our next bus leg, and saw this....
A long, but fun trip today. We got to Dalat around 6, grabbed a quick bite then hit the hay. We are looking forward to exploring this place tomorrow.
We had a maintenance day today. Time to sleep in, chill, walk around at our leisure and get some homework done. Sleeping in doesn't usually work for Beth but she made it until 6, 7, 8 then 8:30 - impressive. Then it was time for some workout bands.
We spent a good while walking around the Ben Than market - it's really big and has a small food shop section and a full wet market there as well. We've really noticed a marked level of aggression by the vendors in Ho Chi Minh - they don't give up easily. In the market they were getting a little physical which invariably never leads to a sale. You'd think if they did this every day, they would learn how to try and engage buyers (we've seen the odd person that has done so, and their sales must reflect that). Instead you typical go down an aisle of, let's say 30 shops selling the exact same t-shirts and they all try the same thing - "hellosiryouwantsometshirtIgiveyouverygoodprice". It's all about "cheap" here - you here locals and tourists often talking about how cheap everything is.... But I don't really want anything :-). One time I passed a quieter aisle, looked down about 20 meters and a woman looked up from her phone and chirped "cheap cheap" - lol, I couldn't even see what she was selling.
After the market, the Trickersons (that's three Bickersons :-)) seemed liked they needed some excercise, so I suggested we go to a park and throw the frisbee. That was fun, though we did get told off by the police for playing on the grass (not allowed in parks!) and then I hit an old lady very lightly on the shoulder and she sat and rubbed it for twenty minutes. She looked like she was about to enter pain and suffering negotiations. I only know hello and thank you in Vietnamese... Sorry! How unCanadian of me.
After the potential lawsuit left, we enjoyed a little workout on the ever present excercise machines they have in a lot of bigger parks in the cities of Vietnam.
The machines are a great idea (though they offer zero resistance so I not sure how much of a workout you get on the stationary bike) for an overpopulated relatively lower/middle class city.
In the afternoon, we went to Starbucks for some decent wifi and Venti Skim Chai. The girls did a couple of hours of homework without too much teeth pulling so that was nice.... Maybe we will keep up the fresh air followed by homework routine, but don't tell them that!
While Abby and I were walking home, a moto zoomed up on the sidewalk in order to bypass about 50 motors stopped at a light, and I saw this little dog balancing expertly on the back seat....
The Mudfords spent the day on a Mekong Delta trip that sounded fun and action packed. When they got back, the power was out in our neighbourhood so they popped by for some beers before we headed out to dinner. DIY BBQ seems very popular in Ho Chi Minh and we stumbled upon an outdoor BBQ place that ticked all of the boxes - busy, lots of locals eating there, separate tables of four for the kids and the adults, and lots of cold beer coming out of our private table side tap!
When we traveled in 1997, we were on a ferry from Bali to the mainland island of Java, Indonesia where we met Kylie and Andrew. We immediately got along while waiting all night (I think we couldn't find a room to sleep in) to start the early trek up to the summit for sunrise on Mt Bromo. It's amazing what a few hours of cards will do among strangers! We ended up sharing a number of travelling experiences in different countries, running into each other later in Indonesia in Malaysia (Perhenthian islands) and again in Bangkok. Back then, without steady access to email, I can't imagine what the odds were of running into the same people over and over again thousands of miles apart. I guess we were on the same migratory pattern.
We reconnected about five years ago on Facebook, and started the conversation about our trip "near" them (9 hours by plane is pretty close when it comes to Australia :-)). They happen to have two girls near our girls ages named Ashlee and Sophie, which is pretty cool.
Beth went out for an early morning walk. We hadn't seen the Mudfords yet as they had gotten in late and were staying at our hotel, yet in the building across the street. As she was walking down the street they called out to her - just like meeting in the streets all those years ago! Apparently they were suffering from a bit of jet lag (3 hours time difference and 12 hours of combined flights from Melbourne) and were all up at the crack of dawn walking through the huge nearby Ben Than market.
We had breakfast together at the hotel and caught up. The girls were quite chatty and seemed to get along right away. I'm sure it was as nice for them to hang out with girls their ages as it was for us to talk to adults (no offence to Abby and Robin if you're reading this.... Let's be honest, you're not reading this unless you've grown up and are reminiscing... In which case, am I right?!).
We walked around the city working up our thirst. It didn't take long so we found a rooftop patio for a drink.
The girls taught each other card games and compared slang. They were both amused at each other's funny accents. Cute!
After finding a mediocre little hole in the wall for lunch in the backpacker district, we decided to walk over to the war museum. When we came here the last time, it was a smallish museum with just one floor of exhibits and a selection of American and Vietnamese machines of war outside.
They have really improved the museum. Outside, there was a section on the Phu Quoc prisons the South had set up with US funding that were used to torture northern "patriots" (the winner of the war gets to determine the terminology :-)). It was pretty shocking for our group - the pictures of barbaric torture methods as well as some of the survivors were disturbing. I was amazed that the methods they describe, as barbaric as they were, were still being performed on suspected terrorists by the U.S. Army and CIA just a few years ago. Pretty sick.
Abby and I checked out the new photo exhibit on the making of the Ho Chi Minh trail (the supply delivery system from North to South that went all throughout Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia), and it really connected what we had learned when we were in the North (seeing the scarring of mountains bombed in Phong Nha national park), Laos (seeing the UXO exhibit at the COPE office) and Cambodia (seeing and hearing stories of land mine and UXO damage in a country not participating in the war). The pictures of women moving supplies thousands of kilometres by hand pulled and pushed carts, and of kids building floating bridges across rivers really hammered home just how much of the population was on board the "resistance".
The most disturbing part of the museum was the Agent Orange exhibit. We learned that the chemical "dioxin" (which scientists agree is the deadliest chemical agent ever discovered - 85 grams can kill a population of 8 million people) that was used in diluted form to make Agent Purple, Agent White and the most used Agent Orange is still affecting millions of people. Dioxin based chemicals, sold by tons of chemical companies but primarily the Mr. Burns-like corporations of Dow and Monsanto, were used by the U.S. Forces to de-forest vast areas of land. Exposure to humans not only affects the primary person, but it alters DNA and creates genetic deficiencies that are passed down to children. We saw..... Horrific pictures. As late as two years ago a woman with one arm and both legs missing (from birth) sent a letter to Barack Obama asking that he allow the 20 plus year old lawsuit against the chemical companies to move forward, or at the very least to support the Vietnamese and U.S. Veterans that were still suffering from dioxin poisoning. The museum did a great job of citing references from international journalists, scientists and trusted observers to hammer down the point that the U.S. involvement was a war of aggression as opposed to an attempt at peace keeping.
An exhibit put together by a photo journalist on all of the photographers that were killed in the war (from both sides) and their associated pictures was also amazing. We were pretty shocked to read about former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey (read here) who recently ran for reelection. He was a leader in one of the raids reminiscent of the brutal scene from Platoon where innocent villagers were murdered.
The whole experience really makes you question what the hell anyone was doing getting involved in this war or any war for that matter. As Andrew said to me, what the hell was it all for? It seemed to have big impact on this kids. I'm not sure the U.S. learned their lesson though.
We walked back to the hotel for a little R&R before our next adventure - a food tour around Saigon.
We got picked up around 5. The plan was to go to four different places and experience scenes and food that we probably wouldn't normally experience.
First up, which ended up being he highlight of the night for most, was a small family owned shop that specialized in spring rolls. We were served an assortment of rice wraps, veggies and meats and made a bunch of different rolls, dipping them in a nice sauce. The beef was a hit - apparently it's a well kept secret by the shop owner... I don't want to know.
We promised we were going to take it slow as you tend to get well fed at these things, but we were all pretty full after stop 1! We went to a local wholesale flower market to get a chance to walk around and get the food processed a little!
We are always amazed in these Asian cities that all of the shops selling the same products or services are invariably in the same block or on the same street. If you want plastic elbow fittings, you go to one of the 10 plastic elbow fittings stores on ABC street! Need a zipper? You obviously go to the clothing parts stores on XYZ street. As our guide explained, it's great for the consumer as the local businesses have to compete on price, quality and service. The only example I could think of where we would have something similar are food courts and auto malls.
The wholesale flower market was no different. It was two or three blocks of flower shops, one after the other.
Next up on the food tour? Exotic foods. We sat in fairly tiny chairs on the sidewalk of a very busy restaurant and had two burners set up. Our guides went course by course, first cooking up the dish, then after we tried, they would tell us what it was. There was a lot of nervous guessing. First up ended up being goat udder - I thought my friend Adam would like this one - it was very chewy. Not my favourite!
Next up was crocodile - basically bony chicken. The curry was great, but the bones were a little annoying and I was getting pretty full on... Well, beer.
The greatest thing we experienced, in my opinion, was sitting out on the street and taking in the action. I love the activity of the streets of Saigon (and anywhere in Vietnam for that matter). Basically there's not enough room to feed everybody inside, and the streets are much cooler at night - so everyone is outside. Activity goes on until around 11pm every night throughout the city, mostly at restaurants and tea shops. Of course there are clubs and they go late, but the everyday workers inhabit the streets eating and socializing on a Monday while their western counterparts are long asleep getting ready for the next workday.
As we ate, we were occasionally approached by beggars, by children with empty baskets asking for money and by elderly people selling lottery tickets (the government allows them to act as commissioned agents for the daily lottery where the max prize for matching 6 numbers is $75,000USD). The best though was this young guy who comes up on his scooter (by the way, there are 6 million scooters in Hi Chi Minh, for a population of over 10 million!) with a huge speaker strapped to the back. He whips out a microphone and starts singing classic Vietnamese karaoke while he sells cappuccino wafer candies for about 50 cents. Now that's enterprising. I had him serenade Beth for 5 wafers....
Last course at this restaurant was deep fried breaded frog legs which were pretty good... Again, predictably tasted like chicken. I asked our guide how this restaurant can add tables and chairs all the way down the sidewalk, in front of other stores. Basically, they pay their neighbours, they pay the police off.... There are numerous payoffs. Corruption runs high here as elsewhere throughout Southeast Asia.
Next up was a seafood restaurant in Chinatown. We had scallops, bbq'ed river shrimp on a stick, calamari and mussel-like clams. All was good, though we were starting to leave behind a lot of wasted food as we were getting really stuffed. We met a Vietnamese guy from Texas (of all places) who was very chatty and super friendly. We are amazed at how many really nice Americans we've met along the way so far.
Last up was the dessert stop. Even though our main course stomachs were full, we all seemed to have room for dessert. It was no Demetre's or crepe wagon (as you can see on Abby's face), but we all still managed to stuff our faces.
The food itself, compared to many of our other food experience, was not the best. However, the tour was a great ice breaker for the four kids and a good chance for the adults to continue to catch up on 18 years of missing stories!
Transfer day! We were sad to say goodbye to Cambodia - it's been fun and the people were really great. We did have some time in the morning to check out the Royal Angkor Museum, which was well done.
Instead of taking a taxi to the airport, we paid double for two Tuk Tuks (we got to know a guy the day before that we liked) so we could enjoy the open air ride back and support these guys who are desperate for business.
Robin and I spotted a Dairy Queen at the airport and started making blizzard comments throughout lunch which went way over Abby's head. Her confusion later led to happiness....
A big plane! We hadn't been on a jet plane in a few weeks, reminding us we were headed back to a big city.
We got to our hotel around 4pm. Wow, I did not recognize any part of Ho Chi Minh - it is a modern city of nearly 12 million people - way different than in 1997, but even when we were visiting back then they said that change was going to come fast to the city - they were right!
We "happened upon" a Starbucks on our way to the girls and I going to see Terminator. It was funny to hear the girls ask who Arnold Shwarzenegger was... Wow, I'm getting old.
We are really looking forward to hanging out with our friends from Australia tomorrow - the Mudfords: Kylie, Andrew, Ashlee and Sophie.
Seeing Angkor Wat was one of the most incredible things I've ever seen. We got up at 4:45 am (ahh so early!) to go see the sunrise at Angkor Wat with our tour guide, Siya. We drove there, and it was still pretty dark outside. I thought that there was going to be no one there at that early of a time, but oh no. There were a gizzilion tourists! Everyone has their cameras and selfie sticks taking pictures in front of Angkor Wat. I couldn't believe the amount of people there! We tried to avoid the crowd, so we sat down on a stone bench away (the best we could do) from the tourists. But of course, then everyone started sitting down too. We tried. Apart from the crowd, it was quite the experience. About 5 minutes after we arrived, the sun started to peak out from behind Angkor Wat a bit. The whole sky was this really pretty blue-ish, pink-ish, purple-ish coulor. The sky was now light enough to see the expressions on people's faces. The sky turned a bit orange with pretty streaks of blue and pink. I love sunrises and sunsets, because all of the couloirs are so amazing. It was especially cool, with the black outline of Angkor Wat and the reflection of it in the pond. It was incredible! We then walked through the main gate, and saw Angkor Wat closeup for the first time (well, for Robin and I). It was breathtaking! We went to the right pond in front of Angkor (our guide told us the right pond was best for seeing the sunrise), and it was really cool with the reflection of the temple. The sun was really high in the sky at this point and it was really bright, hot and blinding. Again, there was a whole crowd of tourists chattering away and taking selfies, but I just tried to enjoy the moment. It was beautiful.
