Leaving Vietnam via the Rice Bowl

When we read that the Mekong Delta was "Vietnam's Rice Bowl," we wondered what that made the rest of the country. After traveling the whole length of the country, we had not seen a single province without an abundance of rice fields. But apparently we hadn't seen anything yet. The Mekong Delta is a series of rivers broken up by small patches of land and lots of space that is neither river nor shore. People live on all parts of the Mekong: on boats, barges, and houses. We spent a few days exploring two provinces of the Mekong before taking the slow boat up the river to Cambodia. Our first experience in the Mekong was in Can Tho, which is the region's largest city and is home to approximately 2 million people. We visited the floating markets of Can Tho before heading up to the border town of Chau Doc.


Sunrise on the Mekong. Worth waking up at 4:30 in the morning to experience the light on the water. Before we even saw the water, we were approached by a little old woman offering her boat for hire to visit the famous floating markets and cruise down the river. We spent 8 hours on the water, floating past the every day life of the people who live on the sprawling Delta.

Max.

People buying coconuts from the coconut boat.

Kara.

Between markets our enthusiastic boat driver pulled up to a small island and led us to a barn where they make rice noodles. She stopped along the way to pick flowers for us.

Kara shooting.

Rice soaks in water for several hours, turning it into a white paste.

Here the paste is spread over metal steamers.

The rice pancake is laid on racks of straw and bamboo to dry before being cut into rice noodles.

Another floating market.

The floating markets consist mostly of boats this size filled with various produce.

Typically the boats sell one item per boat. We stopped at the banana boat and the dragonfruit boat. We saw a duck boat next to us, selling live fowl by the kilo.

Kara looking dorky while steering the boat. Max doesn't endorse the use of the word "dorky" to describe Kara.

Really? Not dorky? Kara in between shots, getting her game face on.

The next day we took a bus to Chau Doc, a border town 2 kilometers from Cambodia. Upon arriving, we went up to Sam Mountain to get a better look at our new surroundings. Our motor bike got a flat on the way back.

Sam Mountain. Lots of locals come up here regularly to watch the sunset as well as tourists. Many pagodas can be found on this mountain as well. Although the tallest thing for miles, it is really more of a tall hill. It still gives a commanding view of the Mekong and we were able to see the border of Cambodia from here.

At the base of Sam Mountain is the international sculpture garden. It was also conveniently located across the street from our favorite vegetarian restaurant in town.

Last Day in Vietnam:

This road divides Cambodia and Vietnam. People lay their rice out to dry on the road. Everyone just drives over it. When in Rome....

Ducks. These were the cleanest ducks we saw all day.

Vietnamese countryside. Strikingly beautiful. Rice paddies for miles in more shades of green then we thought existed.

Rice piles. The straw is gathered around a central wooden pole and is stored outside in these piles.

Dirty ducks. We saw lots of these.

We had heard about the Khmer Rouge invasion of Vietnam and a monument to the victims in a nearby town. We searched for it for a long time without success. When a girl stopped us on the side of the street and asked if she could practice her English with Kara, we asked her if she knew of the "Khmer Rouge Skull Glass House" and she took us there.

Inside the small museum to the "Skull Glass House," we learned about the 1978 massacre of over 3,000 Vietnamese civilians by the Khmer Rouge. The killings happened over the course of two weeks. When we asked our new friend why this happened, she said she really didn't know. We really don't know either; we want to know more about this.

Graphic content.

"The Skull Glass House" is a monument that holds the skulls and bones of some of the people killed in the massacre.

They are arranged by age and gender, from under 2 years old to over 70.

Pagodas surround the monument. In one of them we found an altar to Ho Chi Minh. Kara says, "Yikes". Max thinks this is just as creepy as any other Ho Chi Minh personality worship.

More countryside.

We found this Buddha on top of an actual mountain late in the day. We had heard about it and had to pass through some bullshit authorities to get there. A motobike driver was trying to tell us that we needed to get off our motorbike so that he could drive us up there himself. He followed us a quarter up the mountain before realizing we weren't getting off and the real police didn't care if we were on our own.

This Buddha is massive. 30 meters tall to be exact. Birds fly through his nose and gigantic belly button.

Last look at the Cambodian border before crossing. Cambodia starts where the green rice paddies end and the water begins (right).

We learned a lot here and came to love this country. Its beautiful landscapes, relaxing beaches, historical significance and plentiful vegetarian food will be missed. Goodbye Vietnam.

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