Highlights of Vietnam and Cambodia

Day Two – 18 January 2015

Weather: Sunny, some cloud (“fog”?) and 22.

Wake up was at 7 am and I went down to check out breakfast.

Woah! What a spread. It’s spread over two rooms and is one of the largest selections I’ve seen complete with omelet chef. I filled up on eggs, toast, bacon and tea. I will try the Danish tomorrow.

Our guide, Thom, was around giving out our name tags and making sure we didn’t get mixed up with the other tour groups. Yup…we had to chase one tourmate who was going with the Odyssey group. Some of the others on the tour said they had a hard time getting to sleep last night. I slept like a log and realized it was the Dristan. It’s a decongestant with an anti-histamine in it that can cause drowsiness. So, its effect is two fold. I get a great night’s sleep and get my sinuses dried out.

Thom showed us out to our pink bus and with only 22 people on the tour, we all can take a pair of seats each and still have leftovers. I eventually opt for the back row. It’s elevated and gives me a chance to take pics left and right. As we leave for the Ho Chi Minh Masoleum, Thom introduces himself, the driver and the driver’s assistant.

Yes. After 15 tours, I’ve come across something completely new and different.

Thom says it’s normal here because, well, there’s more “action” here.

No one has to ask what kind of action he’s talking about. One need only stand on a sidewalk and find out.

Actually, the sidewalk is also a “street” so maybe one shouldn’t stand on a sidewalk or they might find out the hard way.

The driver needs an assistant to stop traffic if he wants to do a U turn in the middle of nowhere. The assistant also makes sure we don’t get splat by traffic when we step off the bus.

Cause them scooters go *everywhere.*

The assistant also helps us cross the street and after a hot morning, he even provides a cold towel and cold water service.

I kid you not.

Seriously. I kid you not!

Thom tells us that the driver and his assistant will split the tip.

He also won’t enforce a rotation since we have so few real bus days, but he won’t let anyone hog the front seat. In fact, the front seat is rotated twice in one day. Thom says that given the traffic, a half day in the front seat is all most really want…then they want the back seat.

Too late. It’s mine! LOL

He put on Gavin’s safety video and afterwards, he went on to say he is staying in the hotels with us (unlike other tour groups, he said, which make their guides stay elsewhere and don’t always pay for it. He said TT was good to their guides which is nice to know). Thom said he was available to us 24 hours a day, except in Saigon where his family is. There, he is available 23 hours a day.

No one asks what he is going to do for that hour.

He passed out our Whisper system as well and they are the good ones that work a hundred metres away. He was able to round up some wandering tourists with it during the day. He had to change the batteries on one and when he took them out, he looked at them and said “oh look, made in China. That’s why they’re no good.”

Heh. The Vietnamese joke about the Chinese the same way the Danes and Norwegians do about each other.

Our first stop is the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum.

He tells us it will be crowded and to stay with him like sticky rice. We get to enter the mausoleum through the tourist entrance which has almost no wait while the locals are in another line where they can wait up to 2 hours or more. Thom has us line up 2×2 and he has to collect all our cameras as photos are not allowed and they take no chances. In fact, there aren’t many photos of Uncle Ho online.

We have to pass through a metal detector and pass our small bags through an x-ray machine and then we walk up to the impressive structure.

There are guards wearing white uniforms everywhere and they even make sure no one has their hands in their pockets. We walk in, walk by the remains of Uncle Ho and walk out. No stopping. No talking.

Outside, we meet up with Thom and get our cameras back. Then we’re free to take photos of the exterior of the mausoleum. The site was chosen as it was where Ho declared Vietnam’s independence from France in 1954.

A little background now. Before France, it was the Chinese who occupied the territory for 1000 years. In the 1800s, the French moved in. First in the central region, then the south and then the north. They wanted to make Vietnam the centre of Indochina.

Ho Chi Minh was born in 1890 and he didn’t like the way the French treated the Vietnamese. In 1911, he traveled to Saigon, North America then Europe and settled in Paris where he thought the best way to defeat the snake was to learn about the snake where it lives. He wrote articles to educate the French public on the treatment of the Vietnamese under French rule.

In 1930, the Indochina Party unified all the parties in Vietnam and that would become the Communist Party. Ho traveled to other Communist nations to learn about it and even joined the French Communist Party. At one time, he worked as a translator for a Russian delegation in China but in reality, he was playing 007 and gathering information.

In 1940, the Japanese looked to “help” Vietnam get rid of the French but they weren’t much better. Ho led the independence movement from 1941 onwards. The French returned after the war and were eventually defeated in 1954 at the Battle of Dien Bien Pho.

Even with independence, the north was Communist and the south was capitalist. The US moved in to prevent the spread of Communism and were driven out in 1973 but the war continued for another 2 years.

Ho Chi Minh died in 1969 so he never did see his country reunified. He wanted to be cremated and his ashes divided and spread in the north, south and central Vietnam but his wishes were not followed and his body embalmed and placed in the mausoleum. The body has to be re-embalmed every year and the mausoleum is closed for 2 months while this is done.

Thom gave us time to get some photos and then did a group photo with his cell phone. He said he would share it on social media.

Then we started walking towards the presidential palace and Ho’s residence.

The presidential palace is an old French school that was converted but Ho refused to live in the luxury while the Vietnamese suffered in the south, so he moved into a simple three room house.

He had three cars – gifts from Russia, China and France.

On one of his birthdays, he was given a house on stilts nearby. Earlier in his life, he spent time with the hill tribes in northwest Vietnam and they used to live in these types of homes, so one was built for him in 1958.

It had three rooms as well but no bathroom. That was in a bunker next door.

When he became too ill to use the home, he was moved into a building behind it where he died on Sept 2, 1969. However, Sept 2^nd is the independence celebration and rather than interrupt the celebrations, they delayed the announcement. Officially, he died on Sept 3^rd, 1969.

Thom noted that the French occupation did have its good points. The French left behind their architecture, their cuisine (especially the baguette) and the written language. They are disappointed, however, in the fact that the French did not teach them how to make good wine.

As we finished up, we walked by the mausoleum on the other side and down by the One Pillar Pagoda.

It’s under restoration, but they have a spot where you can view the Pagoda. The story is that the first emperor was childless and had a dream that he would be given a child on a lotus leaf and shortly after, he met and married a peasant woman who bore him a child. In gratitude, he built the Pagoda in the lotus pond.

We got aboard the bus and were treated to our cold towel and cold water service by the driver’s assistant.

Really. I kid you not. I have pictures!

Refreshed, we moved on to the Temple of Literature which was founded in 1070, sixty years after the city was founded as the new capital. This is a temple of Confucius that was the site of the first university. Here, the best of the best were educated and their names inscribed on marble plates on top of stone turtle statues. The turtle is one of the four animals worshipped besides the dragon, phoenix and unicorn. I don’t expect to see the other three. The turtle is the god of education and was the first. It’s also a symbol of long life.

Hanoi was founded in 1010, so you can imagine what went on here five years ago. There are signs still around with 10 10 10 on it representing the 1000 year anniversary on Oct 10, 2010. The original emperor moved the capital from the militarily secure area in the northwest to the current location as it would be better to grow economically. He chose the site after he saw a dragon ascending from the Red River. He named it Thang Long (soaring dragon) and in 1831 it was changed to Ha Noi which means ‘between the rivers.’ The original site was full of rivers but over the last thousand years, the course of the rivers shifted and left behind a lot of lakes like the one I saw yesterday.

As we walked through the grounds, Thom noted that the royals and students each used different entrances. We got to use the royal entrance, but didn’t enter through the gate for the best students. At one point, one tourmate kept on walking and Thom had to call him back but said he hesitated for just a moment, smiled at us and said if he let him go, he could get an extra lunch.

We love his sense of humour.

We got a few minutes to take pictures and headed off for lunch. En route, he pointed out a man getting a haircut on the sidewalk. He said it is called a windy cut as the wind takes care of all the fallen hair.

The restaurant was so much like the one we were at last night, many thought we were in the same restaurant with the spiral staircase and same room, but it wasn’t. Obviously, it’s a popular style.

We had a set menu and again, we didn’t have to choose from the list. We got a sampler of all the items listed. My favorite was the Steamed Rice Pancake Rolled Minced Pork Hanoi Style. I liked the carrot flowers as decoration.

As we finished up, Thom gave us a bit more information. He encouraged everyone to keep their passport in their room in the safe whenever possible. In his 20 years of touring, he’s never had a problem with the safes but has had people keep their passports with them and lose them.

Then they’d have them found by me.

He also warned that like Europe, they do have pick pockets.

They also have motorbike snatchers. They’re like the body snatchers but they just want your purse or camera, so he warned people to keep the straps around our body and to not stand on the curb. He admits that despite the risk, he’s never had any of his travelers targeted.

Someone asked why they had crosswalks if no one bothered to obey them and he smiled and said they were for decoration. Much like the traffic lights. Pretty red, yellow and green lights which offer suggestions to the traffic.

He noted that in Saigon, there are tourist helpers who stand at the crosswalks to help tourists cross.

As we drove towards the old quarter, Thom asked what the price of gas was at home and it turns out that it’s not much different here. But then again, the Vietnamese make much less money, so it’s expensive for them. Cars are triple the cost of the same in the west and houses are about 4 times the cost. But he says they’re all rich.

After all, they’re all millionaires.

He went on to say that the country is Communist in name only. The only vestige that is really left is the one party system. Other than that, you’d never say this was a Communist country. Their economy is the free market and isn’t interfered with to any degree by the government. There is apparently little restriction on travel too as Thom has traveled quite a bit from what he says.

We did a walking tour of the old quarter that was really an introduction to how to navigate Vietnamese streets, which in itself is like doing an adventure optional. Sidewalks are not sidewalks. They’re scooter parking lots.

And they also serve as the on and off ramps for the scooters that park there so you have to watch for scooters going down the sidewalk as though 007 was chasing them.

Crossing the streets are a real treat. Ninety percent of the traffic is scooters. You can cross anywhere and the trick is to be predictable and just walk. The scooters will go in front or behind you. The cars too. So, that’s the one thing that is impressive. There is a respect between the scooters and pedestrians and I imagine accidents come from someone hesitating at the wrong moment or speeding up at the wrong moment and it catches the scooter driver off guard.

And scooters are used to transport *everything*. As I think I noted, children don’t have to wear helmets so you can see one, two even three kids on the scooters with one or two adults.

They can carry oil drums, flowers, hats, eggs…you name it, it can carry it.

At some point, I will stand at an intersection and just watch. It’s fascinating. It’s insanity and poetry in motion at the same time. This is an intersection in Hue where you have six roads intersecting here. No lights or stop signs.

On our walk through the old quarter, we came to the Hanoi Cathedral which looks so out of place. It looks like it belongs in Europe. Ten percent of Vietnamese are Catholic (due to the French presence no doubt). It’s not open to the public.

As Thom was giving his talk, a gorgeous SUV was being loaded onto a flatbed in front of the cathedral. He asked the police what was going on and they said the driver had pulled up, asked them if he could park. The police had said no but the driver simply locked his door and left. So, the police called the tow company.

Yeah. If the police are standing there and say don’t park here…well, don’t park there.

Thom said he had never heard of a tow away zone until he went to San Francisco. It cost him $280.

We kept walking and Thom pointed out a very narrow house with the cutest little balconies. He said if you were of any size, you would have to walk through the house side-on.

But he said it wasn’t the narrowest house in Hanoi. A little farther down the street was a “house” built in the space between two buildings (the blue windows).

He said someone just looked up, saw the empty space and thought “I think I’ll build a house there.”

We get back to the lake and as Thom is speaking, I noticed a Vietnamese guy stand very very close to the woman next to me. Her purse was on her shoulder but most of it was behind her. He held up his phone as if recording Thom, but it was obvious what he was doing. I just turned and stared at him. Two girls behind him starting saying something to him then the woman turned around and looked at him and gave me that ‘knowing’ look. She moved the purse forward and the guy left.

We got back to the bus early cause I think Thom sensed some were getting tired. (Some arrived late last night) and we went back to the hotel for a 2 hour rest. Some had a nap. I downloaded my photos.

At 6, we were down in the lobby to leave for the water puppet show. This is a northern tradition that is now spreading to the south, though he expects it will become harder for the tradition to survive in the modern age. It was the primary form of entertainment in the north for hundreds of years. The show is not done in English and doesn’t need to be. It was a real treat.

The puppeteers are in the water behind a screen and control the puppets on long poles. Sometimes you could get a glimpse of the pole which can’t be that light. The puppets are made from a wood fibre but still have to be replaced every 8 months or so. The water is coloured green not because it’s dirty water but to hide the poles under the water.

The show lasted about 45 minutes. It cost $1 to be allowed to take pictures, but no one was enforcing it once inside the theatre. (I’m guessing they could only charge those they see going in with cameras). I was in the fourth row and it was tricky getting pics and video but I think I got enough to give you an idea what it was like.