Vào Nam

Last week I got to the other end of Vietnam. First flew from Hanoi to Nha Trang, which is on the coast in maybe the southern quarter of Vietnam. It was really hot. Surprise. Nha Trang is probably the best known tourist beach town in Vietnam, but it is an actual town as well, not just a beach. The first day there I rode bike around for awhile. Past all the expensive (relatively) restaurants and the chairs and thatch umbrellas on the beach, over a bridge to find myself in some other part of town where everyone lived in leftover shipping containers and there was no grass or sand, only mud, and where no one came running up to me trying to sell books or postcards or a boat ride to an island or anything, presumably because none of them had any of that stuff. They only looked puzzled to see me, someone obviously belonging to the clean sandy part of town across the bridge, wandering around in their neighborhood.

I went to see some ancient Cham towers - like the ones we saw in My Son, but these were not bombed in the war, and these were not just sitting there but were a quite active worship site. My uninformed observation is that the inside of them looked just like most Buddhist temples here, rather interesting since the Chams were distinctly Hindu influenced, not Buddhist, but anyway, it made visiting them all the more interesting. We all went to a nice seafood restaurant on the beach for one more farewell dinner, went on a boat ride to some islands, where you could snorkel and look at coral reefs, and sit on the beach eating more very good seafood, and visited a 'fishing village' on one island which was one more place where the whole concept of being a tourist seemed really ridiculous.

Aside from that, they have little boats here used to go from shore to bigger boats, and between boats, little round boats maybe 5-6 feet diameter that are just like a big basket. Really, they are made of basket stuff and coated with pitch or something to make them waterproof. Right before we left that village, it started raining really hard. So I put my camera in the driver's cab in the boat (our boat, not the basket boat) which was the only dry place, and sat up on the roof in the driving rain, trying to wash away the feeling that my presence in this place was only disruptive, the feeling that by being a tourist instead of a student I suddenly created this big space between me and what I was trying to see. Well, that's life. Anyway, I got wet and cold and back in town my shower and hot dinner was really good and we left that night on the train for Ho Chi Minh City.

HCM City is the biggest city in Vietnam, economically more advanced than Hanoi, a lot more big bildings. The first day there I had kind of a tour with a cyclo driver - the idea of which raises even more questions, but in any case, I could actually talk to him and use my Vietnamese and I was not with 73 other tourists, so it was a nice day. We went to several pagodas, a museum which was interesting (and in an amazing old French building, of which there are a lot in Saigon), a market selling everything, saw the old US embassy, the new US embassy, the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Post Office (both in the 'amazing old French building' category), and lets see, one more good pho restaurant. In the afternoon we went to visit the 'reunification palace', which was the house of the president of South Vietnam pre 1975, that was big and interesting, and a lesson in bad 1960's color schemes! Then we went to the "War Remnants Museum", which used to be the "American War Crimes Museum". It was rather intense and graphic sometimes, but good to see. They had a bunch of planes/artillery/equipment outside from the US and South Vietnam, and rooms of pictures of the war, and display on the use and effects of Agent Orange, also had a section on Con Lon Prison, which was set up by the French but still in use under the South Vietnamese government, and they also had displays on how Vietnam has changed since the war and some children’s art and more palatable stuff. And, in demonstration of how Vietnam has changed since then (and of our schedule) we went to a mall that night, ate at KFC and went bowling. There are no KFCs in Hanoi. There are a lot in China, so in a funny way eating 'American' fast food reminded me of China.

Anyway, the next day I went to Dalat. Dalat is in the mountains, and is supposed to have the best climate in Vietnam. The best for the French at least, it was a sort of resort town during the colonial period. Still is, really. The nice part, though, was that it was touristy but most of the tourists were Vietnamese. The town was quite hilly, rather astonishing in this country. The place is famous for lots of lakes and waterfalls, green mountains and trees - looking surprisingly like someplace backwoods on the east coast. So we walked around the lake in town, went through a big flower garden there (Dalat - the city of flowers) and just wandered the town the rest of that day. The next day we all rented bikes and went towards a lake, turns out that riding bike in the 'mountains' is not like riding bike in Hanoi, Uyen went back to the hotel by taxi, Lucy and I got to the lake and waterfall, relaxed a little, then decided to go to another waterfall like 12 km away, and it was all down the side of a big mountain. We decided that if we went that far down we could justifiably find some other way up, and still see the falls and not be too exhausted. The falls were nice enough and the surrounding 'park' was truly amusing, and we caught a local bus back up the mountain, with our bikes on top. It overheated, and they fixed a broken radiator hose with inner tube and pieces of wire... but we got back. Then decided that bikes were not appropriate for this place, so we rented a motorbike and wandered around, getting lost in the countryside until it started raining. We came (soaking wet) back to the hotel, got clean and warm, and had a truly fine dinner. Thursday we rode the bus back to HCM, about 6 hours, past a lot of rubber plantations, and coffee plantations as well. Dalat is famous for coffee, and also for wine, although I don't really recall seeing any vineyards.