In general it was a really good trip and we lucked out with a great guide, a nice group of people to travel with, and fantastic weather (we had rain for about 10 mins one day but otherwise no rain)
Overall the Vietnamese people are kind, friendly, open and generous. We met many people from different backgrounds and economic statuses. We feel like we got an exposure to a broad swath of Vietnamese culture. People generally seemed hopeful about the future.
Generally Vietnam seems to be doing well. Clearly the economy is strong and the standard of living is improving significantly over the 50 years since the war ended. Most people seem to be thriving. Having said that, Transparency International’s 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index, which scored 180 countries on a scale from 0 (“highly corrupt”) to 100 (“very clean”), gave Vietnam a score of 41 so government officials are also thriving at their citizen’s expense.
We did feel like we were in a communist country. There were propagandist signs around. Also when we were at places like the Cu Chi tunnels the signage definitely had a pro-Vietnam/anti-American slant. Because of the communist government we stayed away from asking questions about how people felt about the government. I suspect if asked they wouldn’t be able to express their real feelings for fear of some sort of retaliation.
We found no animosity toward Americans and everyone seemed happy that we had come to their country to learn more about it. More than one person talked about the contrast between American soldiers who were forced to come to their country and us who chose to come their country. It was clear that during the war most people sided with the North Vietnamese not because they were communist or wanted a communist government but because they wanted foreigners out (they had just gotten rid of almost 100 years of French rule) and they wanted their country reunified. As I mentioned early in the blog Ho Chi Minh reached out to Eisenhower for support but his request was ignored. It makes me wonder what would have happened if we had given him our support. It probably would have saved millions of lives but of course hindsight is 20/20.
One interesting observation was the contrast between the north and south. The south was much more prosperous and westernized as a result of their exposure to the French (Saigon was the capital during the French occupation) and the Americans.
Vietnam has its challenges with its neighbors. Specially China. According to wikipedia “the two countries [Vietnam and China] remain in dispute over political and territorial issues in the South China Sea (or East Sea). China and Vietnam share a 1,281 kilometres (796 miles) border. Cambodia is closely allied with and heavily influenced by China.
In summary, the future seems bright for Vietnam. However they have their challenges with corruption and their neighbors.
We were up at 4:00am to get a 7:50 and start our long journey home through Toyko. The only interesting thing was as we were about to go through security in Ho Chi Minh they pulled us aside because our luggage was stuck. Eventually someone from Japan Airlines came over and took us back to the desk. It turns out you can’t have batteries in the checked luggage and I had forgotten that there was a camera battery in the suitcase. After a lot of searching we found it and both we and the luggage were on our way!
I didn’t sleep much on the flights but Rick did. I got home and immediately fell into bed and slept all night. The cold weather was a rude reminder that we are no longer in Vietnam.
I think we are mentally getting ready to go home. After a leisurely breakfast, we walked to the local park. In the early morning there are a lot of people exercising ( we drove by it several times on the bus) but by the time we got there this morning most of the exercising was done. They were getting ready for Tet. I think the decorated portion of the park opens tomorrow. They were practicing a song and dance routine on the stage.
We continued our walk and ended up in a coffee/juice shop. We sat in front of the window and outside there were several very tall Vietnamese women recording routines that we suspect will end up on TikTok.
We went to a very decorated restaurant for lunch.
I didn’t like my lunch so much but Rick enjoyed his. Then we came back to the room to get packed up and relaxed for the afternoon. Mai is still checking in us and made reservations for us for dinner.
We relaxed for the afternoon and then walked the 0.7 miles to the Sofitel Hotel for dinner at ST25. We had a delicious dinner. Mai had told them that it was Rick’s birthday so they brought flan with a candle and sang happy birthday to him. We were going to take a taxi back to our hotel but it turned out we need to keep our cash for the taxi ride to the airport the next morning.
Our second day of no supervision! This morning at Mai’s recommendation we went to the Independence Palace which is across the street from our hotel. On this site the French built a building on the site in 1868 to serve as the seat of the French Colonial government. After the French left it was the home and workplace of the president of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). It was the site of the Fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975 that ended the Vietnam War, when a North Vietnamese Army tank crashed through its gates. After the reunification of Vietnam, the building continued to serve as a government and presidential office until 1976 when the capital of South Vietnam was officially moved to Hanoi, and the government’s functions were relocated. The palace is now preserved as a museum, open to the public, and is a popular tourist attraction in Ho Chi Minh City.
The building has nice terrace and the inside shows the working and living quarters of the Republic of Vietnam’s president and vice president. There was a good exhibit called “From Norodom Palace to Independence Palace 1868-1966” which reviewed Vietnamese History and gave clear explanation of the Ngo Dinh Diem leadership and assassination.
There were lots and lots of young people there dressed in their finest, taking pictures.
After the our Independence Palace visit we came back to the room and ate our leftover Indian food from last night. Then we ventured to the market where we made a couple of purchases. The vendors were pretty agressive
Most people from our tour were either flying to Cambodia for the post trip to see Angkor Wat (which we have already seen) or flying home. We have 3 more days to explore Saigon (for 10 years after reunification in 1975 you could get in trouble for calling it Saigon, but today it’s ok). The tour kept us very busy so we took today as mostly a down day. We walked around the city, specifically district 1 for a little while.
You can definitely see the impact of the French and American presences in Ho Chi Minh. It’s much more modern than Hanoi. As Rick says it’s like being in New York (I say almost). There are still some street food vendors and of course the market isn’t anything like NYC but it’s definitely much more western.
Here are a few pictures.
We spent the afternoon blogging and relaxing.
We had a good dinner at an Indian restaurant called Jalsa near the hotel. The food was really good, better than we can get near us. We made friends with the waiter, Anoop. He’s from Chennai and has been here since Jan 7. His commitment is for 2 years.
This morning we left Saigon at 7:30 because we were going to the Cu chi tunnels. Normally it takes about 2 hours to get there but because people have already started traveling for the lunar new year the traffic was terrible and it took us an extra half hour. During the ride, Mai lead a review of the whole trip. It was a great recap of our month-long adventures. Here’s a video of the traffic. The shear number of scooters is amazing.
The Cu Chi tunnels are at the end the of the Ho Chi Minh trail. The Ho Chi Minh trail is the route the Viet Cong used to move troops and supplies back and forth between the north and the south. Only 6-7% of the trail is underground. It was largely dug by guerillas which are south Vietnamese locals who supported Ho Chi Minh and the north’s cause of unification. Mai says that approximately 80% of the Vietnamese supported Ho Chi Minh’s effort to unify the country, the other 20% supported the Americans. Not good odds in my book. FYI, in the 1950s Ho Chi Minh reached out Eisenhower for support while the Vietnamese were fighting the French. He never received a response from Eisenhower so he turned to the USSR and China. He ended up allying himself with the Russians because Vietnam shares a border with China and they had invaded multiple times throughout the centuries. The Russians seemed like a safer bet.
Starting in the 1940s, guerrillas, often women, would dig wells which could be as deep as 60 ft. Then they would dig horizontal tunnels to connect the individual wells. Sometimes they would fill one or many of the well in after the endpoint wells were connected. The soil is mostly clay. Difficult to dig through but relatively stable once a section was complete. For security there was no map of the tunnels was created. The tunnels had obscured ventilation shafts made of hollow bamboo rods connecting the surface to the tunnel . The pictures show the general landscape and a rock-like structure containing a bamboo air shaft.
The Americans discovered the tunnels in 1966. They tried to flush people out of the tunnels by flooding them with water and poisonous gases. They used dogs to identify the tunnels entrances since the dogs could smell the Viet Cong’s body odor. To avoid detection of the entrances/exits the VC would rub chili around the openings after so the dogs would just sneeze and move on.
We went into several tunnels and it was extremely tight. You definitely could have claustrophobia. Below the third picture shows a well in the tunnels and the fourth picture shows how they carried water inside the tunnels.
Other interesting things we learned about the war. They had booby traps which consisted of trap door that would flip down when it was walked on and the person or dog would fall into the pit which contained bamboo spears. Some times the spears would be made of the metal from American bomb casings. Many Americans and Vietnamese died in these booby traps. The Vietnamese strategically positioned leaves to warn other Vietnamese but not everyone understood the code.
Here a picture of VC soldier and guerillas. Much of their equipment, eg. canteen etc., was American, either cast off by American soldiers or taken from our dead. The scarfs could be used to carry things or as a face mask against the gas. They also used it for nonverbal communication. For instance if your scarf was flipped the other way it could mean that Americans are nearby. Their shoes were made from tires from American vehicles. They made the treads of the shoes look like the footprints of American boots and walked on shoes that were facing backwards to disguise their direction of travel. They were very resourceful, using whatever they could salvage to solve a problem. The cape was typically an American parachute and if an American plane or helicopter saw it they would think it was an American.
They would even cook underground and had a series of vents to dissipate the smoke slowly so it was undetectable.
They had hospitals within the tunnel system. They didn’t have any anestesia so they made tea from the bark of the snake tree which would make the injured man high for about an hour. The walls of the hospital were covered with plastic so they could easily wash off the blood.
The whole visit was very sobering and it was clear why we has so much trouble fighting against them. My general takeaway — the US troops were fighting a guerrilla war that they were completely unprepared for. Bombs and defoliants could not defeat a people fighting for the cause of unification. The US was fighting for a somewhat obscure ideology that few of our troops could grasp. We really had no chance of victory…
Our next stop was at a local home for lunch. Two former Viet Cong soldiers joined us and we spoke with them over lunch. One of them did most of the talking. He was 83 and joined the VC when he was 14 years old. He was injured and lost the use of two of his fingers. He is diabetic as a result of his exposure to agent orange. He also fought in the border war against China and Cambodia so he was very highly decorated. Both gentlemen were members of the communist party. Our gentleman was in charge of his local veterans association which helped vets get services.
Lunch was delicious and at the end they brought out a plate of banana fritters with a candle in the middle to celebrate Rick’s birthday. Rick also walked away with a big bag of longans, his favorite fruit he learned about on the trip.
That evening we had our farewell dinner at a restaurant in the 5-star Sofitel Hotel at a restaurant named ST25 run by KOTO, Know One, Teach One, the organization we first visited in Hanoi. ST25 is a type of rice that won the award for the best in the world in 2019. We had to go around the table and tell everyone our favorite memory. Mine was the wide variety of people that we had met. At the dinner, we learned that our guide, Mai, was voted the top OAT guide in the world. Boy, do we feel lucky! The food and the setting were superb.
Today we visited the Mekong Delta. We left the hotel at 8:00. It took quite a while to reach our destination because the traffic was horrific. The Mekong River starts in China and flows through Myanmar, Thailand, Loas, Cambodia until it finally reaches Vietnam. It’s the twelfth longest river in the world. Twenty million people depend on it for food. China recently built a dam that is significantly impacting the delta. Brackish water is making its way further upstream, impacting a number of aspects of the environment – primarily fish and the cultivation of rice. Like many a delta the water is very brown as a result of all the silt, which is dredged on a regular basis. The Mekong typically floods several times per year.
Our first stop was Turtoise Island to meet a farmer and his wife. Approximately 700 people live on the island. He had many pet birds to provide music and entertainment. At the house they had a unique ancestor altar with the lower level honoring their ancestors and the upper level honoring Buddha. The farmer grew mostly pomelos, jack fruit, and cocoa. He took us on a walk through his land. They had canals for river water to irrigate the trees. It seemed hard to believe that he could make a living in this environment.
After the walk his wife joined us for a discussion. Theirs was an arranged marriage. They had 4 children but one of their sons died in a boating accident that involved alcohol. He was buried on the property. We tried cocoa seeds which didn’t taste at all like chocolate. They were actually very sweet. We also had a fresh pomelo, which tastes similar to grapefruit. It was quite good. The farmers wife made fried rice paper which she normally she sells to the kids at the mainland school for their walk home. Today our group bought all that she’d prepared, saving her a boat trip to the mainland.
We left the farmer and headed off in our boat to another nearby island where we boarded sampans. They sampan captains were all ladies. They used their motors part of the way upstream and used their oars to get us the rest of the way to our destination. We got off the sampans and got on a lambro (similar to the one we took to the restaurant on January 11). The lambros took us to a coconut candy factory where they shows us how they make it.
After a little shopping for local clothing, candy and some embroidered clothing we went for lunch. One of the things on our menu was elephant ear fish. The fish arrived standing up in a bamboo frame and a lady came to our table to make spring rolls with noodles, mint, other herbs, pineapple and the fish. It was pretty good.
After lunch we took the boat back to the bus and headed back to Saigon. The group had signed up for another scooter adventure, this time through the streets of Saigon. We got off the bus and were escorted by our drivers onto the scooters. We drove through the crazy traffic of Saigon’s Chinatown with decorations being erected in preparation for the Tet lunar new year. I was feeling fairly comfortable on the back of the scooter but not comfortable enough to try to take pictures. So sorry no pictures of the colorful decorations. We stopped at a coffee shop where we had some lime juice that was quite good. Then we stopped at a Cao Dai temple. Cao Dai a combination of all the major religions. Wikipedia describes it as “a Vietnamese monotheistic syncretic religion that retains many elements from Vietnamese folk religion such as ancestor worship, as well as “ethical precepts from Confucianism, occult practices from Taoism, theories of karma and rebirth from Buddhism, and a hierarchical organization from Roman Catholicism”. Here are some pictures from the temple.
Then we hopped back on the scooters and headed back to the hotel.
That evening Mai had wonton soup and baguettes delivered to our hotel rooms for us.
Today was a travel day so we had to be up very early. We left the hotel at 6:30, went directly to the airport and flew to Ho Chi Minh City, which is often still called Saigon by the Vietnamese.
Saigon is the largest city in Vietnam with about 16 million people. We had a brief city tour on the way to the hotel. We passed the US consulate, and stopped at the post office. The post office was designed by Gustave Eiffel and finished in 1891. It looks like a train station because it was originally designed to be one. Across the street is Saigon’s Notre Dame which is being renovated so we couldn’t go in. We also passed the memorial to the Buddhist monk that immolated himself in 1963 as well as the location of the last US helicopter to leave in the fall of Saigon in 1975.
We had lunch of pho at a traditional, local restaurant.
Here’s a video of us all saying pho.
We got checked into the hotel and Mai took us on a brief orientation walk around the neighborhood. Afterwards some people went to the war museum. We decided to save that for later in the week. I spent the afternoon sitting by the rooftop pool, blogging. I’m all caught up!
That evening we went out to dinner at a restaurant called Vi Sai Gon where we had a delicious dinner including a mekong delta salad.
On the way back to the hotel the driver took us to city hall, a building original built by the French, to see the lights. It was a Saturday evening and everyone was out. Mai talked about how people living in Saigon live in very small apartments and like to get out for fresh air in the evening. The stores along Nguyen Hue Walking St were very exclusive. In the middle of the walkway was a statue of Ho Chi Minh. From there we could also see the lotus fountain, the Bitexco tower with its helipad, and the opera house. The Rex Hotel was on Nguyen St. High ranking US military briefings were held there. Many of the wait staff were VC spies and the information they discussed was passed on. The bar got a nickname and was known as “The Five O’clock Follies”.
After getting back to the hotel, I went up to the roof pool and took some pictures of Saigon at night. They could have been pictures of New York City from my perspective. Quite a contrast to Hanoi.
This morning we took an optional tour called the Dalat Agricultural Tour. Dalat is a big agricultural region due the good weather conditions and the rich volcanic soil. Driving around we saw many greenhouses which contain a variety of vegetables and flowers. We went to one that was growing lilies, roses, and gerber daises. The lilies had buds but were not blooming quite yet, which was good because they are trying to time them so that they bloom for the lunar new year. ‘The roses weren’t blooming yet either but the daisies were. The daisies produce flowers for 2 1/2 years. We learned that you pick the flowers by wiggling the stem very low to the bottom. The flower breaks off and a new one will grow at the break point. We each got to pick one.
We got back on the bus to go to the weasel coffee place. They grow a lot of coffee in Dalat, in fact the Central Highlands where we were is the largest coffee producing region in Vietnam. Vietnam, in turn, is the second largest coffee producer in the world behind Brasil. At this location they grow coffee and then feed it to weasels or more accurately civet cats. The civet cat spits out the skin and the berry part and digests the bean. The civet’s digestive tract partially ferments the beans, changing their chemical composition.. The civet then poops out the bean. The civets don’t get exposed to the caffeine since they don’t actually digest the bean. There is a shell on the bean that the civet poops out which is removed and then the bean is dried and roasted. The result is a cup of rich, smooth coffee with cacao and salted caramel notes. We tried the civet coffee and I don’t like coffee so of course I didn’t like it. Rick didn’t think it was significantly better than regular coffee. It’s quite expensive, $20 for a 1/4 lb. of beans so we didn’t buy any. Here are some pictures from the civet coffee plantation.
After trying the coffee, we saw ladies making local handicrafts.
Next stop a Montagnard Village. Montagnard is a general term coined by the French for the 19 indigenous tribe in the Central Highlands. Today we visited the K’ho Cil village of Buon Chuôí. These people are mostly catholic and were converted by the French during their rule over the area. The people were nomadic, farming the soil using slash and burn methods and ultimately exhaust the soil. Once the soil in one are was exhausted they would move on to a new area of the Central Highlands and replay the gameplan. The government wanted reduce the potential for erosion as a result of their practices so they built houses for them and encouraged them to grow coffee, providing a significant boost to their return on sweat and blood investment.
We rode to the village on a wagon pulled by a tractor. It was quite a bumpy ride! Some of the houses we passed were quite nice because coffee growing has provided a good income to the landowners. Many of the houses had coffee beans drying in front of the house.
First stop in the village was the Catholic Church. Then we visited the chief. The chief’s wife (an arranged marriage) was weaving with what Mai called a backpack loom. She held one end of the loom with her feet and the other end was anchored by being tied around her waist. The couple had 5 children and had given their government house to one of their children so they were living in a shack in the back. Here are some pictures.
After visiting with the chief we had lunch in Dalat and then had some down time at the hotel. Mai took some people to the market for avocado ice cream but we didn’t go because we were full. While at the market Mai bought some puréed durian which she brought back to us. Durian is a super smelly fruit and it’s not allowed in many establishments because it smells so bad. We had to go out on the balcony to eat it. The travel and food writer Richard Sterling states that “its odor is best described as pig-excrement, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock.” Other comparisons have been made with the civet, sewage, stale vomit, skunk spray and used surgical swabs. I tried it and it wasn’t awful but I wouldn’t eat it regularly. Rick found it interesting but not up to par with the jackfruit, longins or leeches we’ve tried.
Later that afternoon we went to Dalat University where we learned about the university and then spoke with some students. Dalat University has over 10,000 students and offers undergraduate and graduate degrees. This was a lot of fun.
That evening we went to dinner at Banh MýChao. They serve sizzling plates (think fajitas) with beef, fish, or mushrooms. The sizzling plate also had an egg and a meatball. It came with a baguette and salad and we were supposed to assemble sandwich bites. It was quite good.
We left Nha Trang this morning and are going to Dalat. Dalat is in the mountains and has an altitude of 5,000 ft so the weather is quite moderate. Dalat was a favorite retreat for the French due to its cold climate. It was also a location for R&R for the Americans during the war and therefore attract Viet Cong spies. Today it is considered a romantic getaway for Vietnamese.
The drive was about three and a half hours. The first half was quite flat but the second half was uphill and quite curvy. We stopped at rest stop where they had jars that contained ginseng root that was carved into the signs of the zodiac.
The second half of the drive it was very, very foggy and the driver went quite slow. I was sitting in the front of the bus and it was a little scary. There are quite a few waterfalls and mud slides Some of the mudslides were pretty significant.
We stopped at a restaurant in Dalat for lunch and a visit with an indigenous K’ho family. Many K’ho people believe in animism or the attribution of a soul to inanimate items and natural phenomena. Many are also catholic. The French brought Catholicism to the area. The K’ho people are matriarchal in the sense that the bride’s family pays the dowry to the groom’s family. The youngest daughter and her husband live with her parents to take care of them. They were wearing their traditional dress and gave a concert using their traditional instruments.
After the concert we had a western style lunch which included choices of pork chops, fish and chips or chicken curry. Next we checked into the hotel. We had the option of going to the “crazy house” in as an afternoon activity. CNN describes it as a “bizarre avant garde guesthouse with a maze of spiral staircases, sculptural bedrooms, undulating surfaces, swirls of bright colors, narrow bridges and hidden nooks.” Rick stayed at the hotel and napped but I went. My trip mate, Sue, and I got lost in the house because there is no rhyme or reason to the staircases. We were there for an hour and spent half of it trying to figure out how to get out. Mai took a silly picture of Sue and I looking crazy.
That evening we went to a home hosted dinner. This is an OAT thing where on each trip the travelers go to a dinner hosted by a local family. The guide does not go with you and it gives you a chance to talk directly to the locals without intervention. We had dinner at the home of a lovely couple. It couldn’t have been a nicer evening.
