HCMC: The Metropolis Formerly Known as Saigon.

Ho Chi Minh City is a sprawling Asian city covering some former marshland, lots of colonial architecture and more churches than anywhere else we have seen on our trip so far. We ended up spending more time here than we thought we would. It was a good jumping off point for some day trips, including the Cu Chi Tunnels. It was also a good place for us to search for a bootlegged "the Wire" DVD set, seasons 1-5. No success. However we were able to get Cambodian Visas and Indonesian Visas in a 24 hour time period. We also spent two days on a motorbike mapping the city for Vegetarian Restaurants. We found over 30. We stayed in a backpacker ghetto on Pham Ngu Lao, which is Kara's new favorite word. It's kind of a seedy city with power outages, sections that flood during the full moon, and lots of visible prostitution.

Ancester worship time, we think. Many people burn offerings in the late afternoon right outside of their shops or on the street. We saw lots of shops selling fake hundred dollar bills in Hanoi; now we know they aren't to play Monopoly with.

Cu Chi Tunnels:

A vast network comprised of over 200 kilometers of tunnels. They are located 70 kilometers North of HCMC. Unlike the Vinh Moc tunnels of the North, the older Cu Chi Tunnels were much smaller (average height 1.5 meters) and mainly planned for military purposes. As many as 5,000 people at a time hid out for up to three months in these crawl spaces. It was a base of resistance for both the French and American wars and was severly bombed on account of this. When bombing didn't work, American troops tried to flush out the NVA in hand to hand combat but were met with booby traps and a vast maze of which they were unfamiliar. Some of these booby traps were quite brutal and focused on impaling soldier with metal spikes by various means.
Side note, this 70 kilometer ride took us approximately 3 hours to find. Thirty minutes of that was through the rain on a motorbike. We arrived at the museum 45 minutes before it closed. We still got a tour.

1-3: Our guide desends into a secret entrance to the Cu Chi Tunnels. He was way too smiley and made jokes throughout the tour. This weirded us out, but is not uncommon while visiting war ravaged areas of Vietnam. In this series of photos, he jumped into the hole and demanded that Kara take a picture of him as he went up and down through the small portal.

Booby trap. Guide: "Door [See-saw] covers spikes, cover door with anything, soldier steps on door, what you think happen?"

After Cu Chi we spent the rest of our time on our previously mentioned vegetarian restaurant scavenger hunt as well as taking some time to explore the city.

Typical street in HCMC. Max was the courageous driver. Kara was the courageous passenger.

More glimpses of Ho Chi Minh City:










Off to the Mekong Delta and into Cambodia....

Kara and Maximilian

This is Dalat.

Dalat: A charming hill station located in the mountains of South Central Vietnam. A French-Swiss scientist, Alexandre Yersin, who is most well known for discovering the bacteria responsible for the Bubonic Plague, "discovered"Dalat and the ethnic minorities living there in 1893. He promoted its development into a resort town for French colonialists to escape from the lowland heat. Yersin lived in Nha Trang, and is remembered here in Vietnam for his contributions to the local medical and agricultural infrastucture, as well as his selfless volunteer work. In addition to introducing European crops and farming techniques, the colonialists brought french architecture. Dalat retains a European feel with it's narrow winding roads, stucco houses, and landscaping. Today, Dalat is a popular vacation and even more popular honeymoon spot for Vietnamese tourists as well as foreigners.

We loved it here. A week before we came to Dalat we had met the reporters and Editor in Chief from the Lam Dong Newspaper (local newspaper in Dalat) on the side of Highway 1. (story in previous blog entry) When we came to Dalat, we were excited to see them again. Our friend and reporter, Nghia met up with us and took us on a wonderful tour of her city.

Many greenhouses can be seen on the hills in Dalat. Some small valleys are entirely covered with them. They are home to flowers, strawberries, tomatoes, and artichokes amongst other crops.

This is Nghia on her motorbike.

She took us to a center for the cultural preservation of the Lat people, who are a large ethnic minority group living in the hills of Dalat. Dalat means "land of the Lat people." Their oral history goes back before the Bronze Age. This is Plim, he is a Lat, and runs this center. He also was wearing a "NYC 212" jersey when we met him. He showed us many pictures of himself and his people performing traditional ceremonies and wearing traditional clothing. He explained that many of the young Lat have now assimiliated into Viet culture and that it is important for the Lat history to be preserved. Plim plays many intruments. Here he was tuning one whose name we have since forgotten that sounded kind of similiar to a ukelele.

Here is a village elder playing another traditional instrument made from bamboo and a gourd.
The glue was made from honeybee wax. It sounded like a harmonized pan pipe.



This is Max attempting to play. He was pretty good, says Kara. Max wouldn't go that far.

Riding through the mountains. Greenhouses ahead.

At one point, Nghia said, "do you want to stop and see flowers?" We said yes, and then were brought through some barbed wire fencing into a private greenhouse. Nghia reports on agriculture, environment, and technology for the newspaper. She didn't have any problems gettnig into this fenced off area once she explained that to the people inside.

All stages of growth are seen in the greenhouse. These flowers and most flowers produced in Dalat are taken 300 km away to be sold in Ho Chi Minh City.

Later Nghia brought us to the Biological Museum. We had seen a sign for it earlier and had shown interest. None of us had ever been here before. It was a creepy, weird, and boring museum. We all agreed on that. The museum was exclusively dedicated to taxidermy.

Chinese pagoda. It was one of Kara's favorite spots in Dalat. We walked through a small forest to find a large white buddha serenly tucked into the woods.

Inside the Chinese pagoda sits a wood table approximately 200 years old. When you place your hands on its surface, after a few minutes, the table is supposed to move on its own. We were instructed to gently place our hands on the table, close our eyes, and think "move right, move right." It moved in fits and starts very slowly. Max thinks he was the non believer responsible for its lack of enthusiasm.

Magestic Horse! Underneath the large buddha there are a series of paintings depicting the Buddha's life. Two large pools collect the rain on both sides. While we were standing under the Buddha, a beautiful horse came galloping up the hill out of the woods. She stopped for water, and was breathing really heavily and Kara loved her and still thinks she is a magical wild creature. Max thinks she belongs to the Temple. Either way, we both agreed she is Magestic Horse!

Group photo.

Lots of churches in Dalat. Also lots of vegetarian restaurants! We found over 10 in this small town.

Group photo #2. Outside Lam Dong newspaper, where Nghia works. The building that houses the paper used to be a French villa.

Crazy House. That's what it is called, really. A Vietnamese woman who studied art in Moscow built this themed hotel/art piece. It has many different rooms that you can stay in, although its business relies heavily on tourists coming to take a look. It is very inventive and strange and would fit right in at Burning Man. Burning Man might be the only place in the world where it would seem normal. We think it is an awesome piece of art.

Max reclining in the "gourd"room. Its only about $30 a night to stay here. (Not on our budget this time, but we would like to come back and spend a night in the kangaroo room, or the giraffe room.)

CHE! (spelled like Guevara.) At the end of the day, Nghia introduced us to this Vietnamese dessert. Che is flavored rice pudding made with many different ingredients that you wouldn't necessarily think to put in dessert. Shown here (from front to back): peanut, artichoke, mixed bean, corn, and lima bean rice puding. The black pot on the left is black bean che, and its delicious. We guess that if you add enough sugar to anything, it makes it a dessert. A small bowl of che is covered with coconut milk and can be served in a plastic bag to go as well. In Dalat they serve it hot, as it gets cold in the winter. A bowl of che costs around 3,000 VND, which is approximately 17 cents.

The next day we ventured out on our own with a rented motorbike. We took in the scenery and wandered without a plan. We stumbled upon a Buddhist Temple with a kind of religious theme park in the front garden. Max thinks it was beautiful and highly appropriate, Kara thinks it was collectively a little tacky, however the pieces on their own were really amazing.

Kara in front of the giant cement dragon.

We followed a road out of town, looking for a vantage point over the city and the surrounding area. At the town of this hill we found Dalat's landfill. The beautiful background was in striking contrast to the malnourished cows who where led up the hill to litterally feed on garbage. It was a very disturbing and tragic sight, and reafirmed why we are vegetarians. Kara tried her best to communicate her anger and disapproval to the cow herder, who pretended they were not his cows at first.

On our way down we saw more cows being led up to graze. Apparently this is a common practice. This is the cow herder Kara yelled at, who eventually brought his cows down the mountain. Vietnam is a country with a developing sewage system, where you can not throw toilet paper directly into the toilet. You throw your feces paper in the waste bin next to the toilet. The toilet paper comes to this landfill. The cows feed here. The people eat the cows.

Another reason we are vegetarians. Local market, Dalat.

This is Kara in front of the lake, holding our flower offering to the newspaper staff. This is the fourth picture in a series. Kara is her most photogenic after getting a little angry at Max. This series happens everytime Max goes to take a picture of Kara.

We arrived at the newspaper to say goodbye to our friends. They insisted on taking us out for dinner at one of the nicest Com Chays (Vegetarian Restaurant) in town. We were driven from the newspaper to the restaurant in the company bus that had picked us up off the side of the road a week before. We had to make a pit stop to pick up the Editor-In-Chief. The food was really good, but the company was even better. They are our first real friends in Vietnam. Kara hopes to make a photo story with Nghia someday on returning to Dalat. Thank you Lam Dong staff, we will never forget you!

We highly recommend Dalat, and will be sure to come again next time we are in Vietnam.

A special thank you to Nghia. We loved talking to you and spending time getting to know you and your wonderful hometown. Your tour was the best we have been on our trip, by far. Thank you, thank you. We hope one day we can take you around New York.

-K and M

Election Day, Nga Trang, Vietnam

We stayed up all night and all day to watch this live. After finding no other Americans or a bar showing CNN with audio, we sequestered ourselves in our room for about 12 hours, holding a CNN vigil from 10pm-10am. At one point Max went out to buy some fried bananas and water.

Obama speaks as the new president.

Later that day, we went to the beach and played the first international game of Circle Rules Football with a group of kids we met. Before playing Circle Rules they were practicing their Britney Spears dance routine (boys and girls). After playing Circle Rules they took pictures of us with their cell phones. Truly a day of firsts.

Goodnight changed America.

Love,
Kara and Max

We're Still in Vietnam.

Yo team,

It's been raining a lot. Thus, the name, "rainy season." This weather has a beauty of its own, but it is best enjoyed from a stationary position, underneath an awning or preferrable, inside your room. Sometimes we venture out to do long days of walking and sightseeing and vegetarian restaurant research on these days, because sometimes, you can't wait for the rain to stop. One positive thing about the rain is that it is helpful when bargaining for rooms, i.e., "But its rainy season, how about $5?" More importantly, it keeps the country green and lush. We made it from our last stop in the DMZ area to Hue, the "ancient" capital of Vietnam. We assumed ancient, as it does in most of Asia meant something from 500 years, 1000 years, or even older. However, Hue was the capital of Vietnam from 1802-1945, serving as the imperial capital of the Nguyen Dynasty. Vietnam's history is over 2000 years old, so we found it interesting Hue is considered so "ancient." Furthermore, if you google "ancient capital of Vietnam," Hue will not be the first, second, nor third result. Interesting. Although a nice city, we spent our few days there completely drenched and underwhelemed by this UNESCO World Heritage Site. Although not pictured, we toured the citadel, which is Hue's main attraction. It was completely flooded which is not uncommon due to the street level coy ponds that flank the entrance.


Kara in Hue, very wet even under Marmot raingear and street poncho/nylon blue potato sack that broke about 6 minutes after buying.


Outside our hotel. Our street had particularly bad drainage issues. The cyclo drivers, moto riders, and bikers were undaunted. This guy wanted us to go for a ride in his cyclo. Instead, we walked for 5 hours in the rain, touring the city. This is also the day Max's shoes became unwaterproof. They still smell, and are still damp. It is over a week later.

From Hue, we traveled to Hoi An, another UNESCO World Heritage Site City. UNESCO seems to have been pretty liberal with this designation, because the city is nothing but a tourist trap, filled with identical shop fronts boasting identical silk merchandise. The majority of Hoi An is just kitchy silk stores. To be completely honest, we were extremely disappointed to see that a once culturally diverse and historic port city had become completely devoid of character. We had read that it was a World Heritage Site because of its architecture, but the only architecture in the town was one story buildings that were covered by these tacky t-shirt stalls, plastic chachkies, and mannequins sporting a silk outfit you can own for "only" $100. This completely destroys the old port heritage that is why it got the UNESCO name to begin with. Hoi An does have a lovely beach, though even the beach is filled with people trying to sell you their "crafts" left and right. Look, we understand people love kitch, and when you travel, its important to get souvenirs. We also understand people need to make a living. We understood, however, that we needed to get out. So we did.

After renting a motobike the next day, we drove out to the Cham Temples at My Son. These temples are a great example of ancient Cham architecture and are situated in a very majestic valley beneath a striking mountain. We were really pleasantly surprised by how the preservation process of these temples had taken place, as some of the temples seemed like they were being actively groomed, while others had moss, vines, and grass growing around them. This two-toned preservation process allowed access to the site while retaining its mystery.

Cham Temples. Just after we got caught in the rain. There used to be many more structures standing, but it was bombed heavily after the North Vietnamese Army started to use it as a base.

Inside one of the temples, which is now been converted into a "gallery" of sorts for out of place artifacts, you can see a deity placed next to the bomb shells that made her homeless.

Ancient sanskrit in Vietnam. Kara thought this was so cool. The Cham dynasty spread Hinduism throughout much of Southeast Asia, which is something we didn't know much about.

Although much of the site is very well preserved, we snuck into one gallery that was still being worked on when no one was there and found so many of the artifacts being used as stands for water, work tables, and in this case, a motorbike helmet.

We drove back to Hoi An to get a glimpse of the ocean before taking the bus the next morning.


Quang Ngai and the My Lai Massacre. This was the heaviest day for us so far, emotionally. We took a bus from Hoi An to Quang Ngai and had lunch at a local street kitchen after being dropped off at the edge of town by our minibus. These kids came up to us and were so persistent in trying to start a conversation that they actually used our phrasebook to ask us sample questions. Their English was really good, especially their reading ability. Better than our Vietnamese for sure. Later we gave them our sparkly sea horse stickers and they kept covering up their hands or cheeks where they had already put them to ask for more. Sneaky little guys, they were. But very cool kids.

Phrase book and Max. It was nearly impossible for Kara to get a shot of them reading without them posing for the camera, damnit. Anyways, you get the point.

We came to Quang Ngai for one reason, to see where the massace at My Lai took place. On March 16, 1968, about 30 US Soldiers were dropped off by helicopters in the outskirts of Son My Village. The soldiers were commanded to kill anyone they saw and burn every house in this small hamlet. The area was notorious for resistance to the French and later the Americans. All villagers were to be treated as enemy combatants even though the majority of the villagers were civilians-- women, men, children, the eldery. In one day, an estimated 504 people from the hamlet of My Lai were murdered. We had grown up hearing about this massacre from our text books, history teachers, and parents. It was important to come here. This was a sick day in the history of the world, and in the history of the war.

Statue of the fallen outside of the museum at My Lai. The Museum sits on the grounds where the village once stood.

Plaque of the names of the dead.

US bombs dropped on the village after the massacre to destroy evidence and to continue the war.

The whole massacre was captured on film by United States Army photographer, Ronald L. Haeberle. He later released the pictures to Life Magazine, which brought international awareness to the incident and further fueled the anti-war movement.

Walking along the now paved walkways of the My Lai hamlet. The village has been preserved as a memorial. The foundations of many of the houses have been rebuilt by surviving family members in their original locations. Each plaque at the foundations states how many family members were killed, their names, and their ages. Many of them were children. The footprints in the walkway make the village feel more real, they make it feel like people actually lived there. Because they did.

Reading one of the plaques at a foundation.

Mass grave of 12 people killed at My Lai. Soldiers lined people up in ditches and shot them en masse. Some accounts from survivors explain that they only reason that they are still living is because bodies that were piled on top of them helped shield bullets.

There were a few outspoken soldiers who knew this was wrong and who fought against their superior: Hugh Thompson and Lawrence Colburn. They landed their helicopter between soldiers and fleeing villagers. By setting their guns on their fellow soldiers and stating that they would open fire if the soldiers opened fire on the villagers, they were able to save a reported 10 lives. We salute you men for speaking out and trying to stop this horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible thing.

Monument to the victims of the My Lai Massacre. We placed two small rocks here, following in a Jewish tradition, for rocks don't die like flowers, or burn out like incense.


It took a while for us to recover from being here.
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We had to move on from Quang Ngai and My Lai though. We needed to make it to Nha Trang, our next destination about 7-8 hours south. Still trying to work through what we had just seen, it was hard to deal with our motobike drivers who seemed removed from the whole situation. They dropped us off on the road where they helped us negotiate our price to get on a bus to Nha Trang. Once on the bus, we slowly felt like something was wrong. They tried to charge us over 10 times what they had quoted on the road. We asked to get off immediately, knowing very well that another bus would pick us up on the highway (this is where you catch buses almost more frequently than from the bus station.) They wouldn't let us off and wanted to bargain, which at that point was NOT happening. Kara banged on the doors and yelled a lot. It was only after Max emphatically stated that there would be no payment whatsoever no matter where they took us, and they became concerned that Kara was a crazy lady about to break the door did they let us off. On the side of the road.

So the ever resourceful Maximilian made a sign for a new bus while Kara bought dragonfruit and learned how to say "lychee" in Vietnamese.

WE DIG THESE PEOPLE. A new bus did not come, but a group of traveling Vietnamese journalists from Dalat (a city Southwest of our Nha Trang destination) picked us up and took us for free to Nha Trang. They work for one of the local newspapers in Dalat and were on a business trip. They were great conversationalists and restored our faith in humanity that day. They also treated us to coconut milk and FIZZY WATER, which made Kara love them. Thank you wonderful people. We hope to see you when we arrive in Dalat.

Nha Trang: kind of a mix between Vietnam and Miami. Not pictured are the high rise resorts next to the beach. We came here to chill out from war tourism, traveling every other day, and to watch the election.

View from a Cham Temple on the outskirts of town.

We began to feel comfortable again knowing that cheesy cute stuff was all around us. Pictured here: stuffed animal display in post office. Naturally.

The Dam Market towards the end of the day.

A Cham Temple.

"Welcome" mat at Cham Temple. Also interesting. Kara has been to more temples than you can imagine, and she has never seen the welcome mat before.

View from top of temple.

Hot springs! Well, kind of. The "hot" spring was closed for repairs, but the warm pool, filled with mineral water was spectacular. Max is lying, prostrate at hte bottom.

Max really liked the water. So did Kara. Kara's weird motorbike exhaust pipe burn felt very healed after this day.

Water jets with mineral water. They looked a lot better than they felt.

Since we are writing our veggie book, we thought it might be interesting for you to check out what we are a) writing about and b) eating EVERY day. Here is a "com chay" stall. Com Chay means vegetarian food. It is, in fact, vegan. The options at most of these fast food restaurants are a choice of rice topped with fake meat and some vegetables, or soup. Com or pho. Com= rice option; pho (pronounced 'fuh',) = soup.

Close up of the "com" option. You can see the "drumstick," just to the left of the rice pile. Fake meat assembled on a bamboo stick. This really grosses Kara out; Max loves it.

Large white buddha statue, erected in the 1960s. It is one of Nha Trang's most disinct landmarks. High on a hill, it can be seen from much of the city. It is a monument to peace, and also the Buddhist monks who set themselves on fire in protest of the Southern government's repression of religion during the Vietnam War.