Bots and Beyond to Thailand: Vietnam!

Vietnam was so vibrant and felt so different than Thailand. The amount of motorbikes was overwhelming and crossing the street was truly a trick. It is unnerving to just walk out into the non-stop traffic and trust that the millions of motorbikes and cars whizzing in many directions and all around you will not actually hit you. Our whirlwind travel only allowed us a week in Vietnam and this is really not enough time to see anything but the major highlights around the two biggest cities, Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) and Hanoi. Ho Chi Minh felt very continental with it's big parks filled to the brim with people walking, couples canoodling, people doing ballroom dance and hip hop, even a few skateboarders and excellent food at every turn. Just outside our guesthouse, an older woman served a cold noodle dish with a little egg, some greens, and a perfectly crispy springroll for breakfast.

While in HCMC, we visited the Cu Chi tunnels which were a Viet Cong stronghold during the Vietnam war. It was horrifically fascinating to hear the details of how both sides tortured each other in the game of cat and mouse played out in and around these tunnels. The used agent orange and bombing while the VC devised boobie traps lined with sharpened bamboo spike, unleashed scorpions or spiders on their victims. The Americans tried to use dogs to sniff out the tunnel locations so the VC would cover the airvents with American trash (cigarette buts, cans, anything they could find) so dogs would only smell familiar smells. Later, when the Americans got wise to this plan, they would line the vents with chili peppers which would burn the dogs' noses and render them useless. The finally of the tour was to go down into the narrow tunnels which we learned had been widened to accommodate foreigners large behinds. It was still oppressively small and I had to keep the claustrophobia at bay by reminding myself that many people bigger than I had made it through. We crawled and scooted for about 130 meters until the relief of fresh air and the exit steps came into view. The sweltering heat and humidity made the air close and the walls sweat. I cannot imagine running or carrying gear through those tunnels much less living in them.

Taylor in the tunnel...much calmer than I was!

The next stop was Hanoi which was wonderfully cool due to its northern latitude and proximity to the coast. Taylor and I met back up with the other fulbright girls and quickly headed out to Halong Bay which is know for its gorgeous limestone karsts and beautiful sunsets. We were picked up at the crazk of dawn by the very enthusiastic Tony, our tour guide. He wore a crazy straw hat folded into different shapes for our different activities and had drawn arrows all over it in blue marker. He learned all our names and liked to call us out by name to ask if we had questions. We boarded what felt like a swanky pirate ship and sailed off around some of the 2000 islands in the area.

On the pirate ship...

Disneyland Cave

We visited a cave that had been stage lit in a multitude of colors so that it felt like disneyland. Later, after some hilarious karaoke featuring most of the guests and some of the Vietnamese crew (I rocked Tiny Dancer—thanks K Marsh for unknowingly priming me for this moment with a mix you gave me a while back!), we turned in for the night. We also visited Catba island which is a up and coming outdoors/”ecotourism” destination (I'm still not sure how blasting roads through mountains and building hundreds of seaside condo complexes is remotely “eco”...). We took a quick hike up about a thousand stairs and some very rickety ladders to a beautiful vista of the heavily forested hills of the island and spent the rest of the day swimming on the one white sand beach.

Our last day in Hanoi, we visited the Perfume pagoda which is an important pilgrimage site for Vietnamese Buddhists. To reach the first pagoda, we boarded incredibly low-riding boats that were rowed by a tiny but strong old Vietnamese woman. She alone, rowed six adults for about an hour up river without letting a drop of water in the boat. Maybe Harvard crew is recruiting in the wrong place...

The first pagoda was beautiful and filled with offerings of fruit and cookies. We learned how each temple in Mahayana Buddhism has a gong on the right and a drum on the left to announce the beginning of religious ceremonies. There was also a recurrent them of three Buddha statues, one representing the past, present, and future. The next step of the journey was to board a gondola that whisked us up the majestic mountain to a giant cave. This cave has many rock formations and they served various functions. One bulbous formation you rubbed for fertility (some of the other tourists jokingly warned us be careful what wish for, one to rid you of your problems, and one where you caught the water dripping from the stalagmites to wipe on your forehead, thus forgetting your problems. The cave had awesome rock formations on the ceiling that looked like giant cake batter being folded. We emerged from the cave ready to face the world problem-free.

Now I am in Luang Prabang, Laos enjoying living on the banks of the mighty Mekong again!