Good Morning, Vietnam!

It's been a while since my last post. There was about a month that felt like a lull in between two vacations. I'm sure interesting things happened at work, because interesting things always seem to happen at work. I'm always telling Lindsay at least one funny story about what a kid did.

However, our impending trip to Vietnam was foremost in my thoughts. Now that it has happened, I'm sure I'll be able to return to the more mundane stories of working here.

When we first arrived in Ho Chi Minh City, we had to take a taxi from the airport to the hostel. On the way, I made my first observations about Vietnam. First, there are a lot of motorbikes in Vietnam. When we were in Taiwan, there were a lot of two-wheeled transports, but the majority were more scooterish. In Vietnam, I would be more inclined to call most two-wheelers motorcycles rather than scooters.

The second observation I made was that many couples in Ho Chi Minh city spend their evenings sitting on their motorcycles parked at public parks about five metres away from the next couple. Somehow they lull themselves into a sense of serenity by turning away from traffic, which is only five metres away as well.

A third observation is that traffic and driving in Vietnam is generally appalling. A horn receives much more use in Vietnam than anywhere I have been before. People in Taiwan weren't afraid to use their horns as a method of communication, and the sounding of horns by frustrated drivers in Hong Kong is quite persistent even into the wee hours of the night. However, Vietnam takes the cake for communication with horns. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the drivers in Ho Chi Minh City are incapable of speech and can only communicate with the aid of a horn. There seem to be many types of honks that communicate different messages; but as our stay was brief, I was not able to invent a system of classification just yet.

The fact that Vietnamese couples can kiss, cuddle and snuggle in peace by merely looking away from traffic is quite an interesting phenomenon. I don't know that I'd feel comfortable since I have observed on several occasions that traffic often overflows onto the sidewalk.

Our hostel was nice, though I wasn't used to the hard beds at first. For breakfast, we had bananas, eggs, and baguettes. The baguettes were pretty ubiquitous in Vietnam. It seems people all over the country eat baguettes as part of their daily lives.

After our first night, we woke up early to catch a tour to the Cuchi tunnels. The tunnels are pretty amazing. With all the paths set up to lead tours through, you don't get a genuine experience of how these tunnels would have looked. On the other hand, I am glad that they are sprayed for snakes, scorpions, and spiders. Let's be honest, most people wanting to learn about these tunnels don't want a genuine firsthand experience of them, especially not the booby-traps.

I'm as amazed by these traps as I am of medieval torture devices from Europe. The fact that somebody actually thought not only about how to make an efficient trap, but also one that would give its victim gruesome yet non-fatal problems, is horrifying. Some traps were called souvenir traps because the only way to remove them from your person, without causing further damage, would be to take them with you.

The tunnels themselves were dark and small, so no surprises there. If I were one of the countries fighting for the South and saw what kind of conditions my enemies were living in, I'd probably give up.

Later that day, we toured around Ho Chi Minh City some more, ate at one of the many Italian style restaurants that seem to be prevalent in Vietnam, and went to bed.

The next day, we went on a tour of some Islands in an area of the Mekong Delta two hours out of Ho Chi Minh City. There was a lot to see, and many people were making their livings by fishing, carving coconut wood, growing rice, and making coconut candy. It was a nice day, and the tour operator looked after everyone pretty well.

On Saturday we took a taxi to a resort area on the coast. We got a good idea of traffic works in Vietnam. Rural driving is definitely different from urban driving. In spite of the craziness of Ho Chi Minh City, there is a kind of organic order that somehow prevents accidents from happening as often as one would think. Motorcycles seem to be able to go wherever they want, and feel confident that cars will yield to them.

Outside the city, there is chaos. Motorcycles are brought low, and are treated with the same spirit as schoolchildren on bicycles. Tourbuses, a nuisance in the city, usurp the role of chief vehicle and have their way with large and small automobiles alike. Once in a while, a lone motorcycle laden with trade goods will try and restore the order of the city, but a passing vehicle will ride its tail honking loudly until the defeated yet still defiant motorcycle returns to the shoulder whence it came.

Sometimes, the motorcycles are lucky even to get a shoulder. When highway traffic reaches gridlock here, enterprising motorists lead those brave enough to follow to found a new lane. Where once only a terra nullius of a shoulder existed, a new world is discovered bringing its occupants ever closer to their manifest destiny. But this shoulder, one must remember, once belonged to the motorcycles, who in their arcadian days, before the arrival of the cars, sped carefree and unaware of gridlock traffic or lanes, motorcycles, who are now regulated to the dirt at the side of the shoulder, motorcycles, who before the arrival of the car used the bountiful space of the shoulder to pass one another in opposing directions.

Once we arrived at Mui Ne, we were pleasantly surprised that our resort was pretty much as beautiful as one could expect. We spent the next two days eating good food, swimming in the ocean, and enjoying our comfortable room. On the third day, we took a jeep tour to some sand dunes. They were beautiful, and I actually slid down some on a plastic carpet. We also stopped at a fishing village where some little kids selling tourist crap joked with us about driving us back to the resort. Our driver, who probably sees these kids every day, seemed unimpressed. We thought they were pretty cute though. They seemed happier to joke and look at Lindsay's camera than to be there selling things.

So that's our trip in a nutshell. I may post some pictures later, but for now, this is all you get.