Vietnam

Ary, one of my coworkers from Argentina, was going to Vietnam for the weekend (7/2-7/4) and invited me to come along. A friend that he met at the ICT (it seems like noone knows exactly what it stands for, but it has something to do with information technology) camp in Thailand was going to show him around, and she said that he could bring a friend.

On Friday afternoon, we left by bus. We wanted to leave in the evening, but apparently, there aren't any busses that go between Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh city after 3pm (that also put a kink in our plans for Sunday, since we needed to leave to get back to work on Monday).

It started raining exactly as we headed out the door. Even though it was only about a block before we found a tuk tuk, we were soaked. Thankfully, I brought extra footwear, and my amazing backpack appears immune to water. Being wet made the bus ride cold, though, because it was air conditioned rather than being as warm as outside.

The bus ride was about 7 hours. I did some reading. Ary and I talked some. Ary also recently got an Android phone, so we messed around with it briefly. He had an NES, SNES, and Sega Genesis emulator on it, so we shared some games from our childhoods.

Two annoying things about the bus ride. First, the bus driver honked the horn at least once per minute both on the way there and on the way back. Second, I'm not sure that the bus driver understands speed bumps in the same way that I do. I came to this realization when I was suspended in the air a few inches above my seat for about a second.

I was surprised when I discovered that the bus goes over a ferry. We stopped to wait for the ferry, but noone told me that's what we were doing, so I just assumed that it was a lunch break (I was hungry). Then I saw the water.\

Going across the border was easy. Before the trip, I had to get a rushed visa (meaning $60 rather than $40) because I didn't know that I was going until about a day before I left, but when we crossed the border, we just showed them our passports and put our bags through an airport-like conveyer belt. On the way back to Cambodia, it was even easier. I gave them money for the visa when I got on the bus, and they pretty much took care of everything.

Ho Chi Minh was very different from Phnom Penh.

The food is much cheaper. I got a good meal on the streets for 25 cents (though, unlike in Phnom Penh, they don't accept US currency) for a meal, and in a fairly good restaurant, we had entrees, two rounds of drinks, and desert for less than $5 each. I was also pleased to discover cinnamon ice cream! People have ridiculed me for saying that cinnamon on ice cream would be good, but now I have seen proof that I am not the only one who appreciates cinnamon in all things.

There is also more begging and more poverty. I commented that in Phnom Penh, I think that the kids are in school during the day and that there wasn't much more begging than in the US because everyone is working in the streets. In Ho Chi Minh, there were hungry kids on every block. When I would buy a meal for one, 5 more would show up. Thankfully, it the food prices are cheap. That really put things into perspective: one Jamba Juice is $5, which could feed 20 hungry kids. It's a different feeling from donating to a nonprofit. I can say with complete certainty that my money was not spent on administrative fees or fundraising and that there are now kids with food in their stomachs. While it may be less emphatic than personally donating food, most of the good nonprofits (ie, ones verified by external agencies) have similar success, with less than 10% spent on administrative fees and all of the rest going to high impact initiatives. In other words, it's good to see where my money is going.

The city felt more western than Phnom Penh. Most of Vietnam is rural, but Ho Chi Minh looks like any other city that I've been to. In other words, next to the hungry kids are fancy stores and new shopping malls. The one difference that it has from US cities is that motorcycle is the primary means of transportation rather than car. The traffic flows the same as it does in the US, though -- it's very ordered and fast rather than organic and slow like in Cambodia. Also unlike Phnom Penh, everything has a price tag, even in the markets. There wasn't much room for bartering.

Ary's friend read my palm. Apparently:

-I have a long lifeline. I'll be at least 80 years old.

-I'll be weak when I get older. I thought I was weak now?

-I'll have a good mind forever

-I have no enemies, and I have many supporters in everything that I do

-I will be happily married with two kids and a good sex life

-I'm very bad with money. It will slip through my fingers. I'm not frugal at all.

Touristy Things:

I saw the War Remnants Museum. It had stuff from Vietnam's war with the US. It was eye opening. I knew that the US did horrible things, but in school, I always learned the "war is hell" point of view from a US perspective. It's very different from seeing a room full of pictures of kids that grow up, to this day, with birth defects because of the toxins that we used, to see families burned by napalm, and to see some the instruments of torture that the US used on the Vietnamese. One example was Tiger Cages, small rooms with no ceiling so that US soldiers could pour boiling water on the prisoners. Another was tiny barbed wire cages that would have prisoners crammed into them. That's in addition to the means of torture that you might imagine -- stuff with hammers, nails, putting saltc in the wounds, canes...

I visited the royal palace. The basement had a bomb shelter. The top floors had a room for gambling and the roof had a dance floor.

I went to a pagoda. The monks there dressed in brown rather than orange (like in Phnom Penh). There were stands with sand to put burning incense in and to make a sort of wish. The temple inside had the pictures of people who wanted to have their ashes reside there. There was a group of school children playing some games outside. It was a nice place. I also learned that, despite the Buddhist presence, most people in the country are atheist.

When we went to the mall to get some snacks for the bus ride back, we ran into a father and some young kids who knew magic tricks. They were pretty good.

Our last stop on the way out was the water puppet show, a traditional Vietnamese performance. The only show that we could make was the 2pm one and our bus was at 3, so we only saw the first half of it, but it was fun. They had a bunch of funny scenes with animals coming out from nowhere. I hear that you can check it out on youtube, also.