Ho Chi Minh - Day 2

Woke up nice and early to be out the door around 7 for our Mekong Delta boat tour. There were like 9 other people on the tour, and our guide was very nice and spoke fluent English. They were very considerate about my vegetarianism, and I got a nice croissant with lettuce and tomato for breakfast. The boat ride was very smooth and I didn't get seasick at all, it was very interesting looking at all the run-down houses on the edge of the river and the plants once we got further into the more rural areas.

Our first stop was at a Buddhist pagoda, where we were shown around and told stories about various aspects of Vietnamese tradition. One interesting story the guide told us was about how, traditionally, a new wife lived with her husband's family for three years after the marriage. She was always the first to wake up and last to go to sleep and had to help take care of everyone. After the Buddhist temple, we went further on the boat and stopped at a rustic village. First we walked around the farmland, it took about 45 minutes and we saw lots of crops, interesting tropical plants (pineapple bushes, banana and coconut trees, etc).

Then we boated a few minutes away and got off at a more trade-oriented part of the town. We walked through a super crowded market where people were selling all sorts of fascinating things. This and the crop area we walked around seemed very un-touristy, and was a neat glimpse at how people actually lived. The grossest thing at the market was a bowl of living frogs. On closer inspection, their eyes were missing and there were only bloody sockets, and their skin was super pink - it looked like they had been skinned alive. Completely awful. There were also bowls of live fish and pens crowded with little chicken and duck babies. One of the catfish decided to jump out at us, and an Australian man in front of me was tossed a bucket by the person manning the stall. He was able to catch it and return it to the bowl, which was impressive.

It was somewhat drizzly while walking around, but it started pouring near the end of our walk through the market. We walked under a more stable shelter (lots of the booths had only cloth coverings, we stood under a bigger metal one) until it conveniently ended a few minutes later.

We then boated over to another nearby area for lunch and visiting a Cao Dai temple. Cao Daism is fascinating, and I had never heard of it before we visited the temple. It's basically a Unitarian-esque religion, that values strongly Buddhism, Christianity, Daoism, Confucionism, etc. The temple was one of the prettiest buildings I had ever seen in my life. It was painted in gorgeous rich colors and looked so bright and happy.

After we saw that, we had lunch at a second Buddhist pagoda; this one also served as an orphange. Our guide told us that some portion of our ticket price is donated to this orphanage as charity, which I'm guessing is why they were willing to cook all of us a meal. They were insanely considerate of my vegetarianism. Not only could I eat two of the main dishes, but they cooked me a separate little dish as well. The main dishes I could eat were a very spicy vegetable soup with bamboo, pineapple, tomato, and okra, and a fried rice dish with tiny green peppers and carrots chopped up small that was somehow tasty even though I like neither green peppers or carrots. I also was made a dish of well-seasoned tofu and cooked lotus root. They were considerate enough to warn me the salad had fish sauce in it. There were also kittens roaming around, one stayed close to our table, mewling pathetically and loudly and rubbing against our legs. A British girl beside me felt bad for it and fed it some rice.

Then the boat ride back - this took about an hour and a half. It was raining pretty steadily, so most of us sat inside the little cabin area instead of out in the front where it was more open. We ate fresh lychee purchased from the market, along with a relative of lychee whose name I forgot and some mangosteen. I learned that mangosteen is like the BEST FRUIT EVER. I had like, three of them. They taste like a mixture between peaches and lychee and I hope I get the chance to eat like a million more before going back home.

Once back to our hotel, we decided to wander around the streets near our hotel. It was fun just walking by all the different shops. I bought a laptop bag because of weight limits on airplanes - on the way here I learned my bag could only be 7kg, or about 15lbs. Mine was 18 to start with, and I intended to acquire some things. You're usually allowed one carry-on and one "small bag" to stow under the seat. So I figured I could put my heaviest things in my laptop / small bag, and then my backpack would be light enough. Hopefully it'll work out; as far as today's flight goes, though, my limit was 10kg and they didn't even bother to weigh my backpack. It's nice to have just in case, though. Only cost me $10 to get, and I bet I could have haggled them down cheaper.

We also bought snacks from a bakery, and cream puffs from a cream puff store. The cream puff flavors were so weird! We wanted to get a durian flavored one, but they were out, so we got a thing of 9 mini vanilla cream puffs and one creampuff with strawberry flavor and cheddar cheese on top. It was too weird of a combination, I made Alex eat most of it. I'm going to accidentally make him fat on this trip with how often there are delicious things I want to eat, but can't finish. Oops. After we felt we had wandered sufficiently, we stopped at an Indian restaurant and I had some of the best Indian food I've ever had. The okra and peas in my dishes tasted insanely fresh and amazing. Only problem was that it was a bit too spicy for my tastes.

We had considered drinking a little and playing pool at a bar we had passed in our wanderings, but we were both too exhausted and Alex felt like he had had enough calories for the day. So back to the hotel, where we showered and took care of random stuff online.

We decided to book a different hotel than the one we had chosen initially for Medan; the hostel we had booked seemed really sketchy and had bad reviews. So we got a nicer place, which is actually kind of important because we're probably going to be spending most of this evening hanging out there. Basically, the only thing we're doing today is traveling. We woke up around 5:30 and headed to the airport (and accidentally got scammed by a taxi whose meter had to have been running way faster than it should have - our ride cost $15, it should have been like $5. lesson: do not let people at hotels get you a taxi, know the reputable companies and pick the taxi out yourself). We had a 9am flight and I typed up most of this while we're sitting around waiting in Singapore for our 4:50pm flight from here to Medan. Medan isn't a great city, so we plan to stick to our hotel other than dinner. Early tomorrow morning - off to Parapat, Lake Toba, and Samosir.

Ho Chi Minh - Day 1

So the flights ended up being not too bad. I was basically able to sleep for most of the first 11 hours of our 13 hour first plane ride. I woke up briefly every 2-3 hours and played around for a bit on the in-flight entertainment system, which was fun to do considering that's what I'll be working on once my job starts up. I read for basically the whole second plane trip, from Taipei to Ho Chi Minh, and I'm on page 200 of the first Game of Thrones book now. Super good so far. When we got to Vietnam, I was a little worried because I had realized at LAX that I left the passport photos I took back in my Irvine apartment (needed them for a visa), but I was pretty sure I had read they would take the photo there for a small fee and they were able to do that no problem.

We decided to just use one of the taxis advertising near the exit of the airport, even though it was a bit expensive compared to average rates, we paid $9 for about a 30 minute ride to our hotel. Once out of the taxi, this guy tried to convince us to stay at his hotel instead (not notable because of the occurrence, everyone on the street harasses tourists to spend money), but when we said no he helped point us towards our hotel. After we had dropped off our luggage inside and went back outside, he was waiting to talk to us more. We mentioned we were going to lunch at a vegetarian place (one across the street had a note that they had veggie options) and he offered to show us a better one. We agreed, and he led us over a couple streets to a cool little shop. His name was Bamboo, and he was very friendly.

Alex and I ate lunch at the store. I *tried* to order fried okra and a cabbage blossom with a garlic sauce, but the waiter didn't speak much English and when I pointed at the menu he messed up and brought me fried onions and a vegetable plate instead. The plate had cauliflower, carrots, and onions, so it was edible anyway although it had a light sprinkling of a peppery peanut mix on some of it that I wasn't super fond of. While we were eating, a guy from Spain sat down at the restaurant and amazed many locals by playing an accordion. After lunch, we originally planned to go to this tourist park thing but when we had looked it up in the hotel earlier it was a bit too far away to go to in just an afternoon. Since we didn't have any plans, and we liked the guy Bamboo who had helped us out some, we asked him for some recommendations of where to visit.

He offered to take us around and show us a few places (not as sketchy as it sounds - a lot of people sell rides around the city on their motorbike). Vietnam traffic is pretty nuts, way more motorbikes than cars and tons of honking because that basically seemed to mean "I'm going to drive past you now, please don't hit me." It was really fun riding through the city that way. Bamboo took us first to the War Memorial Museum, which was really interesting, obviously way biased against the United States, and incredibly depressing. We stayed a while reading through the exhibits, then he drove us over to a Buddhist temple. It was super pretty, and had two ponds filled with turtles and fish. Next was a handicraft factory where they made lacquered plates and art work (they were either hand-painted or in-laid with mother of pearl / eggshells), and I accidentally fell completely in love with a small piece of art made of eggshells and had to buy it. Finally he took us to see these two cool buildings, a Notre Dame Catholic church and the very historic post office.

After that back to our hotel, and then of course we had made the very silly mistake of not negotiating rates upfront. For some reason even though both of us knew that piece of advice, we had assumed that Bamboo not mentioning anything meant we would just pay him whatever we wanted to for his help. We had planned on just giving him about 100k dong ($5) and he wanted 600k ($30). His reasoning was based on an unspoken rate of $5 an hour per person for three hours. Whatever, it was a little pricey when compared to the average rate of renting a moto driver, but he was nice and it wasn't really that much money and we'll remember to negotiate upfront definitely in the future.

We went inside for a bit, then managed to summon up the energy to feed ourselves and find Alex a phone. He wanted to get a prepaid one so he could be reachable. We found one partway down the street for a decent price, and also bought some outlet converters (conveniently unnecessary in our first hotel, but will be probably needed in later ones). Then we went to dinner, and I ordered a vegetarian crispy noodles + veggie/tofu dish but the sauce on it tasted really bad so I didn't eat much of it. I had some of the bruschetta we ordered for appetizer, and part of an avocado shake which was fun to try but made me realize that avocado and sweet things really don't go together well. Had some of Alex's rice, too. We also picked up a motion sickness medicine from a pharmacy next to our hotel, which we might end up needing for either our boat tour tomorrow or possibly our budget airplane rides coming up internal to Asia.

Totally time to sleep, now.